The Kat Ryan Fan Club
by Julia456
Summary: A re-imagining of season 3's "Fan Appreciation".
1. Another Day In Paradise

Note: I've always had a love-hate thing with the episode "Fan Appreciation". I love it, because it's a slight break from the formula. And I hate it, because it's stupid. Not all of it, mind you; just big chunks of it. (Pretty much all of the chunks that deal with Kat.)

So here's a re-imagining. It's done with love. I hope you don't hate it. :D

---

_Still she's a danger girl_  
_ Insane far beyond her years_  
_ On some things she's very clear_  
_ She's a wild adventurer_

_from "Silver Girl" by Fleetwood Mac_

---

Kat's mouth hurt.

It wasn't because she'd been punched or kicked in the jaw. It wasn't because she'd been injured in a car or motorcycle or plane crash. It wasn't even because she'd been screaming herself hoarse at her partner.

It wasn't any of those things, although she would've definitely preferred them. Even the kicked-in-the-jaw one. No – her mouth hurt because she'd been smiling like an idiot for the last six thousand hours.

"How much longer are we supposed to do this?" she asked Berto under her breath, taking a moment to rub at her aching cheek muscles.

"Five minutes less than the last time you asked," he said. He was clearly unimpressed; he had on the stern, because-I-said-so face she had never seen back when was he still a tech stuck at a computer desk. She eyed him with a touch of suspicion until he sighed and pushed up his glasses. "Come on, Kat, it's just signing autographs. I'd do it, except no one wants a manager's autograph."

"Yeah, come to think of it, my hand hurts too," she said, still low enough that the line of adoring fans couldn't hear. "This was a stupid idea. Whose stupid idea was it?"

"Jefferson's."

"Oh yeah." Couldn't argue with the big boss. She put her smile back on and accepted the next glossy publicity photo of herself and Josh. Made a scribble that began with a K and had an R in there somewhere, then passed it back and took the next one.

Occasionally she remembered to ask who she should make it out to, and to say something nice while she was signing, but the whole sports celebrity thing was just – argh, it was like flying a Hawk with a broken gyro. Frustrating beyond belief.

And her mood wasn't improved by Mr. Personality sitting next to her. Josh was in his element, making friends and glad-handing, swapping stories, posing for photos and laughing uproariously. To judge from his behavior, signing autographs under a tent with poor air circulation in the middle of a blazing South Florida summer day was like a party that never ended.

Josh got a charge out of other people. She herself? Not so much.

She kept the smile on and held out her hand for the next photo, but honestly she wasn't paying attention. "Okay, who's this for?"

"Me!" a little voice said.

Kat looked up and saw a girl, maybe seven or eight, standing on the other side of the table. Tiny little thing. Curly brown hair. Freckles. And sporting a huge band-aid on her forehead. "So… What's your name?"

"Meghan Preston," the girl declared. "I ride motocross just like you. The girls at school say only boys can do it, but they're stupid."

"Yeah they are," Kat said. She held out her fist and Meghan bumped it with her own small one. "Do whatever you want. Ignore those jerks. You any good?"

A tiny-shouldered shrug, embarrassed or ashamed. "I won second in regionals."

Kat wrote TO MEGHAN - PRACTICE, PERSISTENCE, POWER - ROCK ON! KAT RYAN – easily the longest thing she'd scrawled all day. "Awesome. Next year number one, right?"

Meghan took the photo back, glowing. "Yeah!"

"Kick some butt," Kat called after her as the little girl walked away, waving. Then she turned and glared at the two guys she called her best friends, though she wasn't always sure why. Like right now. "What?"

Josh was smirking at her. "I just think it's kind of cute, how you're popular with the younger demographic."

Berto chimed in with, "Yeah, you should have your own Saturday morning cartoon."

"Shut up." She shoved Josh's shoulder, hard, and he nearly tipped sideways out of his chair. He laughed at her anyway and went back to signing autographs.

They were stuck there in Autograph Hell for another twenty minutes before the park security staff shooed the remaining line away. Kat and Josh got up and stretched while Berto, ever the mother hen, hovered over them and repeatedly asked if they had everything.

"Yes!" they told him, in unison. Then and only then did they hop into the generously provided (and chauffeured) golf cart and leave for the main event.

Kat was looking forward to the next part with even less enthusiasm than she'd had for the autograph session, because the next part involved being on a stage. With TV cameras. And a microphone.

To cover her apprehension, she complained. "Tell me again why we had to come all the way across the United States to help open a sports park? Like, doesn't N-Tek already have one?"

Josh shrugged. "This place isn't trying to compete with the DOX. And it's good publicity for Team Steel. I mean, we don't get out to the East Coast a lot."

"Thank goodness," she said, barely audible, but of course the Nanoprobe Boy Wonder heard. He flashed her a swift, confused look, which she ignored. Confusion was the price of eavesdropping.

The cart deposited them behind the main stage, which, the overly perky PR guy had told them that morning, would be hosting various musical acts in the near future. Today it was hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony and one team imported from Del Oro Bay, California.

People were scurrying everywhere, dodging the usual backstage chaos and some surprisingly conspicuous construction stuff.

"Kind of jumping the gun, aren't they," Josh said as they veered around the base of an enormous yellow crane, "opening the park before they're done building it -?"

Kat caught a glimpse of the ridiculously huge crowd milling around in the amphitheater in front of the stage and scowled. "Progress waits for no one."

"Especially not for billionaire real-estate moguls," Berto added, with a touch of disapproval. "I heard Richard Shine pulled some major strings to get this site approved for building. It used to be wetlands that border part of the Everglades – one of the most fragile ecosystems in America. Overdevelopment down here is a serious threat."

"Well, it's too late to stop them now," Josh said. "But maybe we can convince Shine to make the place more green."

"Have fun with that," Kat said. It wasn't that she didn't care about the environment – hello, there was only one planet Earth – but she was not in the mood to get righteous about anything, except maybe going home.

But that wasn't happening. The perky PR guy intercepted them, shooed them up a short flight of stairs, fussed over their appearances, and gave them a million instructions about what was going to happen.

"We got it," Josh told the guy eventually. Smiling and friendly. That was why Kat let her partner do the talking: she personally would have torn the man's nametag off and stuffed it down his throat.

Amazingly, the PR guy backed off and went to harass someone else.

"Bro, you sure you don't want to say anything?" Josh asked, and Berto shook his head emphatically.

"Not for all the free buffets on all the cruise ships in Miami," he said.

"Kat?"

"Forget it, McGrath."

He gave her another funny look. "You okay? I mean, I know to expect a few claws -"

"Ha ha."

"- but you seem, I dunno, extra snarky today."

She thought about the TV cameras and the thousands of people who were seconds away from seeing her and told herself that she was being stupid. The competitions on the circuit were almost always televised – what made this such a big deal?

Because the circuit coverage was local, or regional at best, and this was going to be national. The idea that she might turn up on CNN or _SportsCenter_ made her a little sick.

"It's the humidity," she said breezily. "_Hate _what it's doing to my hair."

Josh wisely let that one go; he knew as well as anyone that the invocation of girl stuff meant he had zero chance of getting a real answer.

There were stage personnel dashing here and there. One of them shoved a microphone into Josh's hands and said, "Don't go out until you're introduced."

It was a warning, complete with glare, not a perky and overly friendly "suggestion". Kat found it refreshing.

Generic Top 40 pop-rock music had been playing over the amphitheater's speakers. Now it changed to something raucous and heavier, although still pretty generic and pop. The TV cameras panned over the crowd and turned to the stage.

A man in a slick business suit ran out onto the stage, waving and pumping his fist in the air. He was in his late thirties, dark-haired and tan, trying very hard to be hip - and partly succeeding. At least one of the cameras was broadcasting directly to the giant video screens hanging across the back of the stage, because the whole scene played out there, too, in real time.

The crowd cheered and clapped. The man clapped with them for a moment, then produced a microphone and said, "Welcome to the grand opening of the Magic City Extreme Sports MegaPark!"

Cue further applause.

"I'm Richard Shine. This park's my dream – and so is standing on this stage with one of the hottest extreme sport teams in the world, Team Steel!"

As obedient as the dogs and ponies they were pretending to be, Josh, Kat and Berto came jogging out into the public eye, doing (much to Kat's chagrin) the same sort of waving and fist-pumping as Shine.

Shine introduced them, as expected: "Josh McGrath, Berto Martinez, and Kat Ryan!"

Then he did something _un_expected: he grabbed Kat's forearm and dragged her to center stage, where her face was instantly caught on film and projected on all of the screens hanging around the stage.

"I'm telling you, keep an eye on her!" Shine enthused. "_She's_ gonna be a superstar!"

Kat's already iffy smile had devolved into a pained grimace. It took all of her willpower not to yank free, turn, and break Shine's arm. She could do it, in at least six different ways – two of which would probably result in severe compound fractures.

Luckily for him, Shine let go to applaud, and Kat eased back to stand beside Berto while Josh took control of the spotlight.

"Hey!" Josh said into the borrowed microphone, and got a delirious burst of cheering. "What's up? I want to thank Mr. Shine for inviting us out here, and N-Tek for sponsoring us. We're psyched to be here to help kick off the park's opening weekend, and I hope you guys are all gonna stick around to watch Team Steel _annihilate_ the competition tomorrow!"

More love from the crowd.

Josh rattled off a quick promotional pitch for N-Tek sports equipment, waved to the world in general, shook hands with Shine in a very cool, macho sort of way, and returned to Kat and Berto.

The perky PR guy emerged from the wings to hand Shine a pair of giant scissors. Beaming a ten-thousand-watt smile that proved he spent a lot of money on cosmetic dentistry, Shine stepped up to the red ribbon stretching across the stage.

"Let's get this party started!" he announced, and snipped.

Kat dutifully clapped along with everyone else, but stopped when she saw Josh looking around in alarm. She leaned over and murmured, "What?"

He gave a fractional shake of his head. "Sounds like –"

It sounded like a ticking bomb planted at the base of the huge yellow construction crane. She figured that out a heartbeat later, when the bomb exploded and chunks of girders began to fall on the stage, with the crane right behind them.

She bit back a defeated sigh.

They were definitely going to end up on _SportsCenter_.


	2. Vanilla Sucks

Josh was on it.

He ran backstage to do his hero thing. Kat, meanwhile, grabbed Berto and hurried to help shoo the crowd away from danger, which wasn't her first choice, but minus her N-Tek spy stuff and plus a bunch of TV cameras, she was just a plain vanilla bystander. And plain vanilla bystanders did not, usually, run _toward_ the giant collapsing object.

Which was what Josh was doing – except of course he was Max by the time he popped into view again.

Kat and Berto waded into the crowd and found spots where the park security guys weren't working. She shouted and pushed and shoved people towards safety – tougher than it sounded on paper, because people were stupid when they were in panicked crowds fleeing certain disaster.

Berto took a panicked fleeing elbow to the face and Kat moved to better protect him from the idiots. If that meant _occasionally_ busting a few overly-maddened people in the ribs or skull, well, everyone made mistakes.

She was also keeping an eye on the collapsing crane. It was collapsing, for one thing, and her partner was on its Ground Zero, for another.

Max scaled it, did some awesome maneuver to hook the cable to a permanent, uncollapsing structure, then held the whole jerry-rigged deathtrap steady while the last of the crowd (including Kat and Berto) clawed its way out of the amphitheater.

Berto's hand was pressed to the bleeding cut on his cheek, but he called, "It's all clear!" with an unfazed tone that made Kat proud. Their little techie had come a long way.

Max must've heard; the crane abruptly crashed down onto the concrete amphitheater floor with a soul-jarring BOOM and a lot of squealing metal.

Kat coughed and futilely waved the dust away from her face. Then she turned to Berto. "Okay, let's see it," she said, gesturing at the cut.

He winced and reluctantly pulled his hand away. "It's not so bad."

Kat disagreed. The cut angled across his cheekbone, running below the lower rim of his glasses. It was bleeding like there was no tomorrow – face lacerations always did – and it looked nastily deep on one end.

"Stitches," she prescribed.

Berto went abruptly green. "Uh, I don't think –"

"You guys all right?" Josh said, jogging up to them. He looked out of breath, then alarmed when he saw the blood. "Whoa, what happened?"

"Elbow," Kat said. She dug around in her pockets and came up with a Kleenex that wasn't too shredded. Handed it to Berto, who made a face but put it up to his cut.

Josh made an _ahh_ noise of instant comprehension and nodded. "I hate to say it, but that's gonna need stitches, bro."

Berto gave them both a disgruntled look. "When did either of you qualify as medics?"

"Never," Kat said, at the same time that Josh said, "Hey, you wipe out enough, you learn."

Sirens and flashing lights appeared on the scene, signaling the too-late-but-always-appreciated arrival of the police and ambulances.

Berto sighed. "All right, I'll let the EMTs look at it. You okay, _hermano_?"

Josh flashed a weary smile and briefly held up the arm with his biolink. "Could use a gallon or two of freshly squeezed t-juice. Other than that… I'm good. Do we know what caused the explosion?"

Kat shook her head and jerked a thumb in the direction of the police cars – and Richard Shine, who was angrily confronting the officers. "But I know how we can find out."

Josh grinned.

Kat was pretty pleased, too, until she realized that she was back on vanilla duty again – taking Berto to the nearest ambulance – while Josh got to eavesdrop with his nano-enhanced hearing.

She leaned against the side of the ambulance and scowled at her other teammate, who was loitering a reasonable distance from Shine, and pretending to be dazed, confused and vanilla himself. "Showoff," she muttered.

"You're going to need stitches," the EMT announced to Berto.

"What about one of those butterfly bandages?" Berto asked, hopeful. "Can we try that instead?"

"Nope. Gotta be stitches." The EMT started rummaging around in the ambulance, whistling. "Here we go – numb that up a bit first, all right?"

Kat gave up trying to melt Josh via death glare, or, alternatively, read Richard Shine's lips. Instead she turned her attention to Berto and gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder. "Hang tough, Martinez. It only hurts for a few hours."

"_Muy bien_," he said, with no enthusiasm.

"_Sí, está muy bien – esta __es sólo una pequeña laceración,_" the EMT said fluently, surprising everyone. But it wasn't really that surprising, given that they could probably spit on Cuba from where they were standing.

"Y'all were up on the stage, weren't you?" the man went on, motioning at Kat and Berto with a hypodermic syringe. "You're lucky to get away with just a few scrapes. Some bad injuries here today."

Kat looked around and properly took in the scene for the first time. There _were_ a lot of injured people lying around, being tended to by EMTs and fire-rescue guys and the park's own emergency squads. Ninety percent of it was due to panicked-crowd stupidity. But there were some more seriously wounded people being removed from the stage area on stretchers.

She felt bad. Then she saw that one of the injured was the perky PR guy, strapped to a backboard and being downright unperky as he yelled at the rescue personnel, and that cheered her up.

Berto, meanwhile, suffered through the stitches with impressive stoicism. The EMT taped a square of gauze over the cut and rattled off a list of things he needed to do to avoid complications. Berto suffered through that, too, and had just promised to go see a real doctor at a real hospital when Josh returned.

Kat pulled him off to the side and demanded, "Well?" in a low voice.

"Shine's been getting threats from eco-terrorists," Josh said, also in an undertone. "The last one came yesterday, warning that if he opened the park he'd regret it. The cops are trying to backtrack the threats, but they haven't had any luck. Shine is furious."

"Eco-terrorists," she repeated.

"Yup."

And here they were, former professional counterterrorist intelligence operatives. She grinned. "Oh, we can _so_ do that."

Josh grinned back and stuck out his fist. She bumped it with hers, and they broke up the mini-conference to go drag Berto away from the EMT.

Kat was looking forward to some quiet time in the van, preferably with her headphones plugged into her guitar so the only thing she had to hear was her own rockin' self and not Josh and Berto asking her to be their maid. As if.

But they hadn't gone more than a few yards when they were intercepted.

"There you are!" Richard Shine exclaimed, coming up to them with arms extended. "Thank goodness you're alright."

"Actually, some of us got a little dinged," Kat said, nodding at Berto.

Shine glanced at the injury, registered it, and moved on in the space of a reptilian eyeblink. "I am absolutely mortified that this – _obscenity_ happened to you, my special guests."

Kat caught Josh's eye. _Mortified?_

He mouthed, _Special guests?_

"I cannot _begin_ to make this up to you," Shine continued, oblivious, "but please, let me try. One of my properties is the Vizcaynos Hotel in South Beach – five stars, of course. The Presidential Suite is yours for the rest of your visit."

He held out a keycard – to her, Kat realized belatedly. She took it, trying not to touch his hand. Had his entire spiel been directed at her, too?

"Wow," she said, sticking the card in the back pocket of her jeans. "Gee, uh, thanks, Mr. Shine."

He flashed his expensive smile, perfectly white, and nowhere near meeting his eyes. "Please, call me Richard. And it's the _least_ I can do."

"Okay," Kat said. "Great. Uh, thanks again."

"Don't worry about your safety tomorrow, at the prelims," Shine added. "I'm hiring additional security. The very finest for world-class athletes like you."

He gave everyone another lizard smile and left, and Kat looked at her teammates.

"That was… weird," Josh said, making a face. "But nice. I guess."

Kat pulled the keycard out of her pocket and wagged it in front of Josh and Berto. "So what's the verdict? Do we ditch the van and crash in the Presidential Suite?"

Josh shrugged. "It's fine with me. Bro?"

Berto had a contemplative look on his face. "I wonder if room service is comped."


	3. The Best Things In Life Are Comped

Room service, it turned out, was totally comped.

_Everything_ was comped, and the concierge was exceedingly fawning, which Kat always appreciated.

The hotel was a skyscraper right on the beach. The Presidential Suite occupied a large chunk of the top floor, accessible only by a semi-private elevator. It was presidentially swanky, with ultra-modern furniture in ultra-cool white-and-glass, plus some tastefully enormous flower arrangements. The wall facing the ocean also boasted tastefully enormous windows that had to be a liability in a hurricane.

Berto began raiding the en suite fridge while Josh tested the assorted sofas and beds for comfyness and the TVs for picture quality and channel availability. Kat checked to see if the balcony doors actually opened; they did. She stepped out into a stiff ocean-scented breeze and felt slightly more at home.

"Come check out this view," she called.

Josh left the TV and came out onto the balcony with her. Berto followed a few moments later, already eating a candy bar.

"Huh. More skyscrapers than Del Oro," Josh said.

"Yeah, and right on the beach. That _can't_ be good during hurricanes." They automatically looked at Berto for the expected science mini-lecture on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane rating scale and the deadliness of the various categories therein, but he wasn't paying any attention to them or the view.

"This is the best candy bar _ever!_" Berto exclaimed through a mouthful of chocolate.

"It should be," Josh said. "It's what, like, fifteen bucks?"

Kat went back into the room and examined the discreet menu. "Sixteen fifty. And get this – twenty bucks for an eight-ounce jar of macadamia nuts."

"Now that," Josh said from the balcony, "is obscene. What kind of sucker would pay that kind of money for junk food?"

"Not us," Kat said, opening the fridge and peering inside. "It's comped, remember?"

"Oh yeah. Hey, toss me those nuts."

Kat lobbed the jar underhand across the room, and Josh caught it easily. She found a bottle of ridiculously expensive orange juice, and they all sprawled out on the sofas to watch a tastefully enormous high-def flatscreen TV. The van had similar equipment… but not the home-theater surround sound system.

Berto finished his candy bar and rigged up a gadget to sweep for audio/visual bugs – because they were still spies, and they had paranoid thoughts about swanky comped rooms owned by lizardmen.

He went over the entire suite while Kat and Josh argued over who would win in a fight: Godzilla or King Kong. It was supposed to be a staged argument, to distract any hypothetical snoops while Berto worked, but it quickly turned quasi-serious. Okay, very serious, especially when Josh claimed that King Kong would win despite the obvious lack of radioactive fire breath.

She knew they sounded like a pair of five-year-olds, but she couldn't help it; it was just too much fun to spar with Josh.

"We're clear," Berto announced, rejoining them. "But we'll want to sweep again after any time we're all gone at once."

"Okay, Mom," Kat said, not quite willing to humor him. That had been covered as SOP during her first few months of N-Tek training.

"All right," Josh said, switching off the TV. "Let's get started on this eco-terrorist stuff. Any way you can hack the police reports, bro?"

Berto already had his laptop out and running. "No problem."

"I get why someone would want Shine's park gone," Kat said. "It's cool, but not if you're bulldozing wetlands to build it."

"Bombing it into oblivion isn't the answer," Berto pointed out. "Okay, here we go. It looks like the threats have been delivered via standard mail. Local postmarks, no fingerprints or DNA… the letters themselves are all printed from someone's PC, but that doesn't really narrow anything down. The cops are stuck."

Kat took a final swig of orange juice and debated trying to toss the bottle into the discreet and elegant trash can across the room. "What do they actually say?"

"This is the last one Shine received." Berto pulled up the document and turned the screen so they could all see. In plain twelve-point Arial, the bomber had written:

**no more warnings**  
**you made your choice**  
**see you opening day**

"Gee, that's not ominous at all," Kat said.

Josh said, with more than a touch of disgust, "I can't believe Shine didn't take that seriously. He put all of those people today in danger – for what? Money?"

"There's more," Berto said, typing and scrolling. "Um… it's all pretty much the same thing – 'get out or else'. The threats date back to the time Shine announced he was buying the land."

"So what's the name of the group?" Josh asked.

Berto clicked and skimmed, his eyes rapidly darting left-to-right behind his glasses lenses. "They're affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front," he finally said. "But the police think it's more of an independent, unknown local group. It could even be an individual – that's one theory from the psych profile."

"Whoever it is, they're definitely going to hit Shine again." Josh brooded over it for a moment. "We can't pull out of the competition – we're the star guests. So we'll just have to keep our eyes open while we're at the park –"

"- and maybe do some mild sleuthing after-hours," Kat added.

Josh flashed a smile. "Read my mind."

Berto called up all the schematics and blueprints he could get for the MegaPark, then plugged Josh into the portable transphasic generator while they analyzed everything. By the time they finally ordered something from room service, Kat was experiencing eyestrain from squinting at tiny lines and numbers, Josh was back at a crisp 100% power, and Berto had eaten three more candy bars.

All in all, a productive afternoon.

They watched _Spider-Man_ while they ate – mostly for background noise – and talked about the plan for the morning. Josh and Kat had motocross prelims that they both anticipated acing without any difficulty; after that they'd be free to play detective all they liked. Berto had no set agenda but intended to skulk around the park's admin building, looking for a way into their stand-alone servers.

"OK, kids, I'm calling it a night," Kat said after the movie was over, standing and briefly stretching. "Anyone want to fight me for the big bed?"

Josh looked tempted, but – "Nope. Take it. I'll just have to put up with one of the other five."

"I have some things I want to research," Berto said. Translated, that meant: _I'm going to work until I pass out over my keyboard._

"Awesome," she said. Kat exchanged good nights with the boys, then left them to their own devices and went off to hog the presidentially luxurious bed.

Five-hundred-count sheets. Richard Shine was a creepy sleaze with big fat question marks where his ethics and morals were concerned, but the man, Kat was forced to admit, had a nice hotel.

She went to sleep with the happy thought that there was still probably a chance she would get to break his arm.


	4. Beware of Blonde

"I don't wanna know how much overtime _that _cost," Josh said, nodding in the direction of the ill-fated MegaPark stage as they headed for the motocross track.

Approximately fourteen hours earlier, a very big, very bright yellow construction crane had been draped all over the stage. Now the only sign of narrowly averted catastrophe was the fractured concrete of the amphitheater.

"Gotta have everything looking nice for the next bombing," Kat said. She threw in some extra cynicism for free.

Josh _hmphed_ in agreement, then paused, his head tilting slightly to one side and his eyes narrowing.

Kat recognized the space-cadet look for what it was: "Secret message from the mothership?"

"Berto found an unguarded terminal or something at the main building. He's snooping."

"Good for him."

"Now we'll just have to keep our eyes open for something strange."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a girl dressed in the MegaPark uniform bounced up. She was approximately the same age as Kat and Josh, but, to judge from her bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked expression – not to mention the jaunty blonde ponytail – she lived in a land of rainbows, lollipops, and unicorns.

Kat braced herself for the worst.

"Uh, hi? I'm Kelly Geer?" the girl said, managing to give a statement and ask a question all at once. Kat inwardly snarled; that was one of her biggest pet peeves. If you had something to say, _say_ it. With confidence.

"I'm with public relations?" Kelly went on. "I work for Danny, who was with you yesterday?"

Danny. Perky PR guy, last seen being loaded into an ambulance. Right. So Kelly was his perky-plus-one assistant. Yay.

While Kelly dug around in a heavily logoed MegaPark bag, Kat quickly and discreetly mimed hanging herself to Josh, who immediately tried to bury a laugh inside a cough.

Oblivious, Kelly went on, "Park management asked me to pass out these ID badges to all the athletes? You know, 'cause of what happened yesterday? It'll make it easier to identif- omigosh, _you're Kat Ryan_!"

Kat was so startled to hear an exclamation instead of a question, it took her a second to process the words. "Uh… Last time I checked."

Kelly's megawatt beam juiced up to gigawatt, and she actually jumped up and down a little. "Ohmigosh this is so _great_!" she squealed, grabbing Kat's hand and squeezing with desperate enthusiasm. "I mean _you_ are so great! I mean you are like my _favorite_ athlete on the circuit!"

Kat tried to get her hand back and discovered she couldn't.

Meanwhile, Kelly turned to Josh and finished with a breathless, "She so _rocks_, doesn't she?"

Josh said, "Yeah. Rocks," in the strangled tone of someone who was about two seconds away from falling down laughing. Over Kelly's beaming, Kat shot him a look reading _Die in a fire_. He had to turn away with another laugh-cough.

With thoughts of justifiable homicide running through her head, Kat forced a smile and reasonably friendly, "Hey, thanks, Kelly, I-"

"I don't know what, like, Danny told you, but I can totally get you anything you need?" Kelly said, cutting her off. Rude – but at least the anaconda death grip on her hand disappeared. "It's no problem, okay, so you can ask any time?"

With a sinking heart, Kat realized that Kelly had only let go of her hand in order to whip out a Sharpie and a little notebook, and was now scribbling numbers furiously. "I mean, listen, if you need anything – anything at all – you just let me know okay? I'm here almost every day and if I'm not, like y'know, _here,_ then you can just call me?" She held out the paper bearing her cell number with such hope and faith shining from her eyes that Kat was (reluctantly) compelled to take it.

"Uh… sure. Sure thing," Kat said. To her own ears she sounded about as excited as she had that time N-Tek had announced a mandatory four-hour training seminar to teach their agents how to fill out after-action reports.

But Kelly didn't notice. After another squeal and spate of excited bouncing, with some giggles added for good measure, she chirped, "Okay, so, bye-bye, see ya!"

Kelly ran off. Josh thoughtfully waited until she was out of range before he burst out laughing.

"Okay…" Kat said, looking down at the paper. She pondered the best course of action, then wadded it up and took a free-throw shot at Josh's head. It pinged off of his temple and he caught it one-handed. "_That_ was a whole lot of cheery."

They resumed walking towards the motocross track, and Josh tossed the paper ball into a trash can with perfect nothing-but-net accuracy. "Price of fame."

"At least she doesn't want to date me." That happened more frequently than she was cool with, if she was being honest. It seemed to be her haircut that was throwing people off. Well, screw it; easily-grabbed long tresses were the last thing she needed during hand-to-hand fights.

Josh pretended to think about that. "I don't know… If she does ask you out, can I record the moment for posterity? - or for your defense attorneys?"

Jerk. "Maybe I'll tell her you and I are dating."

He gave a laugh that was more of a snort. "Who'd believe that?"

She spared a moment to be offended – was that a slur on her ability to snag a guy? because they weren't _all_ confused by the hair – and then said, "Yeah, it's crazy. We like all the same stuff, spend every waking moment together, make a devastatingly hot couple… Where people get these random ideas is beyond me."

"I don't get it either," he agreed, then dodged effortlessly, laughing, when she aimed a strike at his head. "Hey, good luck on your prelims. Meet at the cafeteria at noon?"

"Or at the jail with bail money for Berto," she said.

They exchanged mock salutes and went off to their respective prep areas. Kat got suited up and checked over her bike. There were about ten other girls competing, most of whom she'd never met. Instead of making small talk, she went out to the track, found a nice spot to lurk, and watched the men's prelims.

Josh, in eye-searing N-Tek blue and green, was easy to spot. Even if he'd been wearing gray and brown, however, she would've been able to find him: he swept the competition handily.

He was sometimes a jerk, but he was always one hell of an athlete.

He posted a great time (she would have to beat that) and took his helmet off before he walked his bike off the track. She thought she had done a good job positioning herself unobtrusively, but Josh ran his hands through his hair, did a scan of the track, and waved to her. Grinning.

She mouthed _No fair_, which he would only see if he was indeed using his enhanced vision, and was gratified when he sketched another mock salute. She was grinning herself when she turned to go back to the prep area –

- and bumped into Kelly Geer. Who, for reasons known only to hyperactive squirrels, was carrying Kat's helmet.

"Hi Kat!" Kelly exclaimed. "I saw you out here and I thought, omigosh, did she forget her helmet? So I like, found it for you? Here you go!"

Kat accepted the helmet and wondered if rainbow-lollipop-unicorn cooties were as contagious as she feared. "Uh… thanks."

Kelly did not take the hint and disappear into a puff of perky smoke. "Were you watching your teammate – whatshisname?"

"Josh," Kat said. "McGrath."

Kelly said, "I don't know why everyone talks about _him_, because you're _soooo_ much more awesome, y'know?"

Not that she'd never had that very thought herself – but hearing it from Kelly raised her hackles. She gritted her teeth and told herself that you couldn't be mean to the terminally stupid. "Thanks. Look-"

"I mean everyone knows the only reason he _got_ the job is because his dad owns N-Tek? That is so. Not. Fair. You're ten times better than he is – it should be _your _team! Oh, but omigosh, you need to go get ready? Like, good luck!"

"Thanks," Kat said again, with even less actual gratitude than before. What she wanted to do was read Kelly the riot act for even _thinking_ uncharitable thoughts about her partner. That was Kat's job, because she knew the guy and sometimes had to do his laundry and sometimes had to save his life.

And sometimes he had to save hers, and as much as she absolutely hated that (and she absolutely did), he did it well. He didn't deserve to be trash-talked by a fizzy-headed blonde with rainbow-unicorn-lollipop contagion.

Luckily for Kelly, she bounced off again before Kat could say any of that.

Unluckily for Kat, it was not the last time she saw her new least-favorite fan.

Kelly was cheering from the sidelines during the prelims.

Kelly was hanging around the women's locker room after the race.

Kelly was trailing behind Kat and Josh as they met with Berto.

Kelly was getting on Kat's last nerve. And that was never a healthy thing to do.

But short of physical violence, or pulling some awesome evasive spy maneuver, she had no way to get rid of Kelly, who after all was just doing her job. Mostly.

"I can't eat here," Kat said, gesturing at the cafeteria and trying to ignore the urge to send a death glare over her shoulder at the lurking Kelly.

Josh gave a surreptitious glance around. "Yeah, the atmosphere's a little… creepy. Perky… and creepy."

"Those're the same thing as far as I'm concerned," Kat said.

Berto brightened. "I know! We can go back to the hotel and get room service!"

The hotel: where, thanks to a lot of frilly, stuffed-shirt security measures, Kelly couldn't follow.

"Berto, you're a _genius_," Kat said.

"Well, technically, yes," Berto said, pushing up his glasses, "but –"

"But nothing," Kat interrupted. "Let's go!" She grabbed Berto's right arm and Josh's left, and dragged them across the parking lot to their ride - leaving Kelly to eat their dust instead of ruining their lunch.


	5. Knock Knock

Fawning concierge, check; swanky lobby, check; ritzy elevator to the presidential suite; check.

Random basket of flowers waiting outside their door.

Check?

"Careful," Josh said, holding out a hand to stop Kat and Berto from going any further. It would have been paranoid, except, in their line of work… not so much. "Let me, uh, look at it first."

Kat stood back, hands on hips, while Josh did his nano-enhanced vision thing. Better than a bomb-sniffing dog any day. For one thing, she thought, the dog wouldn't fill out a pair of jeans nearly as nicely.

She kept _that_ to herself.

"Okay. I don't see anything," Josh said after a moment. "I think it's safe."

"You mean they're not going to spray knockout gas or something?" Kat said. "Frankly, I'm disappointed."

Berto bent and picked the flowers up, handling them with the same ginger caution he used with toxic chemicals. "They're for you," he said, surprised, handing them to Kat.

There was a card stuck in amongst the flowers; she read it to herself and then, as they entered the room, out loud.

" 'With a talent like yours, the sky's the limit…and I'll be with you every step of the way. Here's to a great future!' " She flipped the card over, looking for a sender, but all she saw was the hotel logo. The note itself was written in a precise, elegant script that could only have come from someone at the concierge desk. "Huh. It's not signed."

Josh plucked it from her hand and scowled at it. " 'I'll be with you every step of the way'," he read. "What's _that_ mean? There's something weird about this."

She grabbed the card back, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash can. Then she picked up the flowers and looked at them. Red roses… nice, but a little frou-frou. Definitely too far on the cheesy side of romantic. She thought about chucking them into the trash, too, but decided to put them somewhere prominent to bug Josh. "Puh-lease. You're just jealous. Can we order some food now? I am _starving_."

"Uh… I'll call room service for pizza," Josh said, picking up the room's phone. "What do you guys want on it?"

Berto said instantly, "Extra cheese!"

Kat called out, "Pepperoni!" She stuck the roses in the middle of the coffee table and then went to the bathroom to wash the romance cooties off her hand.

Evidently Josh thought that was his moment to be slick, because as she turned off the water she heard him saying in a low voice, "…just delivered to Kat Ryan, but there's no name on the card – can you tell me who sent it?"

She rolled her eyes and dried her hands on one of the ultra-swanky towels. She was, occasionally, almost willing to admit that Josh was cute, but not when he was being needlessly overprotective.

The flowers were from Kelly – she was willing to bet money on that. That made it awkward (red roses… another person fooled by the hair) and annoying, but not dangerous.

"Oh. Uh, okay. Thanks," Josh said, still hushed. Kat headed back towards her teammates as Josh told Berto, "They won't release the name. Hotel policy."

Josh met her eyes, and she was pleased to see a half-second of guilty panic there. After all, it went so well with her narrow-eyed glare of death.

Berto, back on his computer, was equally unimpressed by Josh's overprotectiveness. "How come you're so freaked out by this? Lots of fans send you letters, pictures… all kinds of stuff."

Kat leaned against the back of the couch, saying, "Yeah, Mr. McGrath. I seem to remember a couple of envelopes with some _very special_ mementos inside."

He flushed. "I threw those out. Anyway, this just feels… different."

"Hold that thought," Berto said. He did a fresh sweep of the suite for bugs, then returned, fidgeting with the gauze bandage taped over the stitches on his cheek. "I think I'm allergic to this adhesive."

"Don't mess with it," Kat and Josh said in unison. They exchanged a glance, and then Josh went on, "You can probably take the bandage off tomorrow, bro."

Berto sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that."

They found a movie on the TV, to better play the part of everyday athletes chilling in their super-awesome comped suite when the room service guys showed up, and had fun playing _Mystery Science Theater_ while they waited.

It was a short wait; had to give Shine that. Within minutes an employee was knocking on the door and announcing, "Room service!"

Josh did the honors, tipped the guy, and deposited the pizza onto the sleek glass coffee table as if he'd gone out, hunted it, killed it, and dragged it home all by himself. "Let's get down to business," he said, grabbing a slice along with Kat and Berto. "I turned up nothing. Kat?"

"I learned that I have a _really annoying_ stalker," Kat said. Not even a big bite of supremely delicious pizza could soothe the irritation of a full day's exposure to Kelly Geer. Still, she forged ahead and took another bite. Just in case.

Josh looked tempted to make a joke, but wisely refrained. "What'd you find out today, bro?"

"Something is definitely going on," Berto said around a mouthful of pizza. "Shine's financials are all over the place. It looks like he's guilty of tax fraud, at least. But there were a lot of files I couldn't access – if I want to see them, I'm going to have to get onto Shine's own computer."

Josh whistled. "Sure you don't want me to do that? I'm the one with a stealth mode, after all."

Berto shook his head. "I don't know what I'm looking for yet. And I don't know what kind of security I'll have to go through to get it."

"Good point," Josh conceded.

Kat finished chewing and said, thoughtful, "You know, for someone with trillions of little machines inside them, you really suck at computer stuff."

Josh threw her a mildly dirty glare. "Thanks for pointing that out."

Kat threw him a wide grin in return. "Anytime, McGrath, anytime."

Berto inhaled another slice of pizza, wiped his fingers on his napkin, and got back onto his laptop. "There's got to be more clues here," he said, but it was mostly to himself. Kat exchanged a grin with Josh over the top of their friend's oblivious head.

The moment of normality was cut short by a prim rap at the door, followed by an equally prim, "Guest Relations."

No one played the shower-stabbing music from _Psycho_, but it would've been a good time for it.


	6. Secret Agent DressUp

Kat wasn't entirely sure she was up for another round of dealing with one of Shine's employees, but Josh had just gotten the pizza and Berto was working, so she was obligated to open the door. "Yeah?" she asked, rude and not caring.

One of the uniforms from the concierge desk was standing on the other side, bearing a large, flat white cardboard box, as well as something shaped an awful lot like a shoebox. "For Ms. Ryan, with compliments from Mr. Shine."

She eyed the boxes. Couldn't they be from – oh, Biocon or someone? A venomous mutated snake would be preferable to whatever Shine was gifting. "Oh boy," she said, with no enthusiasm at all.

The hotel employee continued to hold out the boxes, face professionally blank, until she felt sorry for the guy and accepted the delivery. "Put it on the couch," she said with a put-upon sigh, stepping back from the door.

Boxes delivered, the man left without pausing for a tip, which was good, because Kat was certainly not going to give him one.

"Okay, let's get this over with," she said, unceremoniously opening the smaller box and dumping its contents out onto the couch. Two glittery, strappy black high-heeled sandals emerged. They looked way too expensive to be dumped out onto a couch, even a presidentially swanky one.

"Weird," Josh said, his scowl audible.

"And now for door number two," Kat said. She opened the larger, flat box and shook it out. Along with a sealed envelope and a lot of fluttering tissue paper, this one yielded a silky black dress.

"I'm sensing a theme," Berto said.

"Yeah." She held up the dress and gave it a critical eye. The name on the label put it into crazy-expensive territory. "Right color, wrong tax bracket. I see why Shine's in the red."

Josh, meanwhile, had picked up the envelope and now tore it open. " 'Dearest Kat'," he read, making a face. " 'I hope you'll accept this invitation to –' "

Kat snatched the letter away from him. "To what? It'd better not be –"

"To dinner." Josh crossed his arms over his chest. "At the five-star restaurant on the ground floor."

Berto leaned over her shoulder, peering at the invitation. "Malacostraca? That's a terrible name for a restaurant. Although… I bet they make a mean crab quesadilla."

Kat thought they probably did, but there were other possibilities to explore. Like: "I suck at playing femme fatale, but if he's shelling out a few grand for a dress, he's ready to talk."

"Not much of a dress," Josh said, poking the fabric.

"It's Miami," Kat said. "Did you not see the girls on the beaches? No, wait, I know you did, because you got drool all over the van's steering wheel. Besides, I'm not wearing jeans to a five-star restaurant. Only rock stars get away with that, and they wear six-thousand-dollar jeans."

She picked up the ridiculous strappy shoes and swept off to the bathroom, the one place where she could close the door and be reasonably sure that Josh wouldn't come after her.

He came after her.

"This is not a good idea," he said through the door.

She shucked her shirt and rolled her eyes at her reflection in the mirror as she kicked off her Converse and started undoing her jeans. "This is being a spy. You know, investigating? Gathering intell? That stuff? It's not all car chases and shootouts, McGrath."

"But we know he's hiding something ugly, _and _someone's trying to kill him. Going on a date with the jerk doesn't sound like a great idea. At least let me go with you."

"Sorry," she said, wiggling into the dress. "You didn't get a dress."

"Kat," he said, exasperated.

"Josh," she mimicked. "Look, I'm a big girl, and I can handle one sleazeball businessman."

The dress had just enough back to require a zipper. She contorted her arm up and around to pull at it. Predictably, it got stuck halfway up.

She was covered enough not to offend Josh's modest sensibilities (ha!), so she opened the door while she kept fighting with the zipper. "Berto's not giving me grief."

That got a little mouth quirk of involuntary amusement. "Berto doesn't do car chases or shootouts, either."

"Or play femme fatale in ridiculous heels." She craned her neck to see what was up with the zipper, but – of course – it was at exactly the wrong spot for her to get a clear view.

"I don't like it," he insisted.

"Relax. It's probably just Shine trying to suck up some more. And yeah, it's a little gross, but this is a great chance to find out more about what's going on, and you know it." She gave up on the zipper with an exasperated huff, turned so her back was facing Josh, and twisted one arm around to point at the offending fastener. "Instead of whining, do something useful and get this _stupid thing_ unstuck."

"Uh… I don't… You can't get that yourself?"

She wasn't facing the mirror, so she couldn't see his face, but odds were it was bright red. And he probably had that deer-in-headlights look, too.

She rolled her eyes and played her ultimate trump card: calling him a wuss. "So you'll go _mano a mano_ with my nonexistent stalker, but the zipper on my dress is too scary? Boy. My hero."

_Three, two, one… _

"Shut up," he said, audibly defeated and not happy about it. He stepped closer and gave the zipper an experimental tug that had zero effect. "It's caught on something."

"Wow, really?"

"Shut up," he said again. There was some more tugging – including _downward_ tugging, which she had not exactly anticipated. She made an attempt to see over her shoulder and nearly cracked heads with him.

Unaccountably, it flustered her. "Sorry."

" 'Sokay. Um… maybe if…" He put a hand on her back. His fingers and palm were too warm and she was much too aware of the touch. Suddenly she was much too aware of everything: the foreign swish of silk around her legs, the quiet hum of the air conditioning, and most of all, the scent and heat and quiet, steady breathing of the young man standing so close behind her.

It was sad, she reflected, but this was the sexiest thing that had happened to her in at least two years.

There was a little _pop_, a surprised "Hey, I think I got it," and the zipper slid smoothly north to its appropriate terminus. Kat felt to make sure it was really in place, then turned around.

"Thanks, McGrath," she said, to cover the fact that she now sort-of-kind-of wanted to ask him to help take the dress _off_. Not that she ever would. She had standards, after all. And pride. And…

…and there was another reason in there somewhere, she was sure. She could look for it later. "Maybe you're not totally useless."

He flashed her a dirty look. "You're welcome, Ryan."

She put her shoes on standing up, checked herself in the mirror, mentally debated makeup, decided she didn't care that much, and finger-combed her hair instead. "Okay, here goes nothing."

She made sure to elbow Josh in the gut on her way past him. Then she had to concentrate on walking in the stupid heels. It'd been a while since her last expedition in anything other than combat boots or sneakers, and it required an entirely different posture. A more feminine and graceful posture, which emphasized the more feminine features of her anatomy… which were already a little too much on display, thanks to the dress.

But she would deal with it.

"Tell me what the food's like," Berto said as Kat came through the living room again.

"I'll be sure to order any crab quesadillas," she said, and he gave her a little wave goodbye before disappearing back into his laptop.

That left only Josh to follow her out into the hallway and glare at her.

"I don't like it," he said, evidently not afraid to sound like a broken record.

"Good, 'cause you don't have to," she said, pushing the "down" button.

"Backup," he said.

"Nope," she said.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. She stepped inside and pressed the button for the lobby.

Josh crossed his arms over his chest. The glare had turned into a full sulk. "Fine. Whatever. Have fun."

"Don't wait up," she said cheerfully, and winked just as the doors slid closed.


	7. The Dinner That Wouldn't Die

Despite what she'd told Josh and Berto, Kat was not okay with this whole dinner thing.

For starters, it was major-league creepy. Shine was much older than she was, had a string of ex-wives, and was trying way too hard to be Mr. Cool. Beyond that, he'd already racked up some more specific strikes against him.

Strike one: she was wearing a dress and heels.

Strike two: she was in a fancy restaurant.

She let him hold her chair for her as she sat, and wondered if she shouldn't go ahead and count that as strike three. Just to get it over with.

"Kat, you look _beautiful_," Shine said, seating himself on the opposite side of the table. Of course – him being the owner – it was the best table in the place, which of course meant everyone could see them. "I'm so glad the staff was able to find something this… _stunning_ on such short notice."

Okay, maybe that was strike three.

She said, with badly faked enthusiasm, "Yeah, it's really great."

He flashed one of those brilliant, empty smiles that didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. "I have to admit, I'm looking forward to tomorrow's race – ah, thank you," he said, interrupting himself as the waiter handed them menus.

Kat took one glance at the discreet, elegant lettering – in French, _naturellement_ – and lost all appetite. She knew without further investigation that none of the menu items included pizza or burgers. And what else was a girl supposed to eat?

It turned out not to be a problem, because Shine ordered for her. "You'll love it," he said after the waiter had gone. "It's a house special. I found the chef in a restaurant in Marseille – hired him immediately. You can meet him after the meal if…"

There was more, a long endless stream of more, but Kat tuned it out. Instead, she wondered how soon was too soon to plead urgent-and-lengthy business in the ladies' room, and whether or not skipping out on a creepy pseudo-date with Shine would get Team Steel booted out of their suite. And, for that matter, how much gloating she would have to endure if Josh and Berto found out she'd been bluffing.

The food arrived. Shine's much-vaunted "house special" was something that looked vaguely like seafood covered in orange-pink goo. She poked at it, more to make sure it was dead than anything else. Mostly she twisted her napkin into pretzel shapes under the table, pretending it was her host's neck.

Shine didn't notice because he was still trying to impress her with the never-ending list of How Awesome Is Richard Shine. He managed to keep up a running diatribe even while eating, which, she was forced to admit, was pretty talented.

But finally she just couldn't take any more. He was droning on about the tile in the lobby ("imported from Italy – polished by hand, daily") but obligingly shut up as soon as she cleared her throat.

_If I'd known it was__** that**__ easy_, she thought darkly, trying not to scowl. "Mr. Shine –"

"Please," he said. Big white smile. "Call me Richard."

Okay, she was officially calling strike three.

Still, she couldn't just get up and stomp out – she didn't want Josh and Berto giving her grief about being right. She gritted her teeth and forged ahead. "Richard. I'm a little confused about what I'm doing here."

He faked surprise worse than she had faked excitement over the dress. "I would think that was obvious."

_Ew_. "Umm…"

"I want to be your manager."

She sat back, genuinely stunned. "My what?"

"Your manager. Your agent." He spread his hands in an all-encompassing gesture and dropped his voice to a confidential, intimate level. "Everything you need."

"Uh, look, Mr. Shine, that's really nice-" _overwhelmingly ick-inducing_ "-but I already have a manager. And a five-year contract with N-Tek."

"Contracts can be dissolved," he said, with a wink-wink nudge-nudge tone that did nothing to make Kat's appetite return.

"Okay, here's the thing: I don't _want_ to get out of my contract," she said. "N-Tek's been really good to me. They're like my family. Josh and Berto – they're like –" She broke off, the word "brothers" suddenly stuck in her throat. Talk about ick-inducing: you didn't usually want one of your brothers to feel you up.

"Family," Shine echoed. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table and steepling his fingers. "There's no way I can convince you to change your mind?"

Kat looked him dead on and said flatly, "No."

Triumph flickered in Shine's eyes.

She didn't know what that meant, exactly, but little secret-agent alarm bells started going off in her head. Something ugly was brewing.

But all Shine did was lean back and look thoughtful. "It's funny. The first time I saw your picture, I said to myself, 'I think I know her'. And now I'm convinced. The only question is: _where_ do I know you from, Kat Ryan? And how can I get to know you _better_?"

Well, if she had been waiting for the creep-o-meter to hit eleven, that moment had arrived.

She got ready to stand up, with the possibility of flipping over the table and grinding Shine's face into the seafood goo. Which he'd probably like, the sicko.

"Kat!" a voice said behind her. A familiar voice, sounding pleasantly surprised.

She twisted around in her chair. "Max," she said, pasting her smile back on. "What're you doing here?"

And the Miami-chic clothes – white dress shirt, no tie, sharp black suit, all of it fitting like a second skin – where had fashion-impaired Josh McGrath, he of the six identical t-shirts, gotten _those_ in the last hour?

"Came down for the sports park opening," Max said, Mr. Affable with his hands in his pants pockets. "Weird about that bombing, huh?"

"Yeah, weird. Max, this is Richard Shine," she said, playing at good manners. "He owns the park – and this hotel. Mr. Shine, this is my friend Max."

Max stuck out his hand with the doofy smile he used when he was undercover; Shine shook reluctantly. It was slickly done. Even Kat had trouble believing that Max had already met Shine just a few hours before.

She caught Max's attention, narrowed her eyes slightly and tilted her head just so. Saying, loud and clear, _What's the plan, Steel?_

He made a similar invisible head motion, and she felt immediate, immense relief. The plan was to get her out of there.

A good partner. Priceless.

"Where's Berto?" Max asked her, still oblivious, still congenial. "And McGrath?"

"Last I saw, they were still in the suite," she said, then explained (with a hint of mischief), "Mr. Shine comped us a room."

Max raised his eyebrows and whistled. Shine gave a smile that showed no teeth at all and in fact seemed to be a substitute for strangling Max.

Kat had felt the strangle-Max impulse before, but right now she was more inclined to throw her arms around him and give him a big thank-you kiss.

"Come on, I'll take you up to see them," she said, standing and dropping her mangled napkin onto her uneaten seafood goo. "Mr. Shine, thank you so much for dinner. And for the dress. It was… something special."

And before Shine could say anything – and holy cow, was she sick of hearing that man talk – she grabbed Max's arm and marched him across the restaurant floor. The heels made little clicking sounds on the tile; she couldn't help but think that her old N-Tek boots would've been much more impressive.

"I know you didn't need anyone to watch your back," Max said, "but I thought I'd watch your back."

"Hey, I am not complaining." She punched the up button and the doors swished open almost instantly. "Where'd you get the suit?"

He grinned. "Remember the Seraph mission, in Shanghai? I had to wear a tux. Turns out the code was still in the probes' memory, so Berto modified it."

"That's one way to do it," she said, amused – and impressed by the ingenuity, although she would never admit that.

The elevator slowed, stopped, and let them out on their floor with a cheery, muted _ding!_ Kat took two steps into the hallway and stopped. "Okay, I hate these shoes. Hold on."

Max obligingly came to a halt beside her while she bent down to pry off her ridiculous strappy high heels. The feel of her feet, properly flat against the hallway carpet, was heavenly. She wiggled her toes and sighed in bliss.

"Happy now?" he asked.

She swung the shoes in one hand as they started walking again. "Shine's gone, shoes are gone… all I need is to do is get back into a pair of jeans and I'll be just fine."

"You look nice," he said. Casual. Not trying nearly as hard as Shine, with the whole _beautiful _and_ stunning_ bit. But those three words made her temporarily forget how to walk.

"Seriously?" she demanded.

He nodded, face solemn. "Almost like a girl."

She punched his arm and he rubbed at it, laughing. "Jerk."

"No, you do," he said, actually being serious this time. "You look really good."

There was a moment when the words might've been tattooed on the air between them. He was in a killer suit, she was in a slinky dress, they were standing alone in the hallway of a glamorous hotel… If she had been a different kind of girl, that would have been the moment for her to get all swoony, starry-eyed, and stupid.

But swoony wasn't her style. To say nothing of starry-eyed or stupid.

"Aww," she said. She used her shoeless hand to ruffle his brown hair. It had a completely different texture from Josh's, and the eyes of course were different too: bright blue instead of warm brown. Somehow that continued to catch her off-guard at odd intervals, especially because the light that shone behind his eyes was exactly the same.

Then she plucked the keycard from his pocket and swiped it through the lock. "I'm starving. Are there any macadamia nuts left?"


	8. Kaboom

To no one's shock, even while dealing with a pesky fangirl, Kat's performance during the prelims had been good enough to nab her the top women's score, although Josh (to the benefit of his ego) had taken the best overall.

That meant, among other things, that they both got to run the late-morning semifinal heats. It also meant that they spent that extra time stuck in the cafeteria being interviewed by a handful of local news affiliates – and, of course, some guy from ESPN.

"Yeah, it was scary," Kat said, several times, when questioned about the bombing and how she'd hung around, helping evacuate bystanders. "But, you know, people needed help, and look what I do for a living – it's not like I _avoid_ danger."

She was proud of that response; she'd worked on it when she should have been sleeping. It was honest, funny in a lame way, and above all, bland.

There was no way to tell who might see her on a national news broadcast, but if she was lucky (for once in her life), the blandness might throw certain people off. She'd never been bland; she'd spent most of her life trying to stand out. Now she was crossing her fingers that she wouldn't.

Josh, sitting at the next cafeteria table over, had a more difficult time explaining where he'd been during the bombing. Kat took some small, petty satisfaction out of the fact that he had to flat-out lie to the reporters.

"I got trapped behind the stage," he told them. "I didn't see anything, really. Just a lot of smoke and metal."

As far as lies went, it was also pretty lame. But he seemed sincere, and there was that people-person amiability to blind his interviewers. (Hard to be suspicious of a guy who volunteered to balance the salt shaker on his nose, saying, "Tony Hawk showed me how to do this once.")

Eventually the reporters cleared out and she and Josh were able to get ready for their heats.

So far, Kat hadn't seen Kelly lurking around anywhere. Just to be safe, she spent a long time dawdling in the women's locker room. Not that it would be off-limits to a female MegaPark employee, but at least she would have the option of shoving Kelly into a locker if the need arose.

But when it came down to just Kat and a girl who was involved in the World's Most Dramatic Cell Phone Conversation, Kat decided the risk of rainbow cooties was the lesser of two evils. She left the locker room to the drama girl and ventured back outside, helmet under her arm.

She checked the score on the big board, then her watch, and because she had the time, used her awesome spy skills to detour around the other athletes, the security guys, and the civilians to catch Josh just as he was finishing the post-race check of his bike.

"Not a bad score," she told the back of his head. "I guess."

He stood and turned, grinning, fearless, brown eyes wicked. This was the one place where Max and Josh began to blur – where they were both confident, cocky, aggressive. He took a few steps closer, well into her personal space, saying, "I'd like to see you do better, Ryan."

She poked one finger into his chest, making him lean backwards slightly. "Oh, just you wait, McGrath."

The confident grin flickered, smoldered, then returned to normal. "Promises. Hey – watch the last jump. It's nastier than it looks."

"Maybe for _some_ people," she said. "Not for the truly awesome."

"Who would that be?" he said, voice innocent but eyes still dancing.

She rolled her own eyes and shifted her helmet to the other arm. "Shut up. If that's all you've got? - I'm gonna go make your score look sad and small."

He let her walk away with the last word – almost. She was ducking back under a security barrier when he called out, "Take no prisoners!"

Since that was precisely what she'd intended to do anyway, she didn't feel bad about accepting the advice.

In fact, she was feeling pretty darn buoyant as she went through the usual rigmarole of prepping for the race. Not even the exciting recap of the World's Most Dramatic Cell Phone Conversation (between the drama girl and another athlete, apparently her friend) could put a dent into Kat's good mood. She wondered why – then realized she really didn't want to think about it. Because being happy over two sentences in a hotel hallway was the kind of fluff-brained idiocy she couldn't condone under any circumstances.

She grabbed her bike and began rolling it towards the starting line. Running the course through her mind, she felt herself sinking into the laser-tight focus of competition. Everything else started to fall away, leaving her with only-

Kelly's voice shrilled, "Hey Kat!"

Kat's concentration shattered into a thousand instantly irritated pieces. She whipped her head around and pinned Kelly with a glare previously reserved only for DREAD minions. "_What?_"

For the first time ever, Kelly seemed taken aback. "Um, I just… I wanted to wish you luck?" the other girl said, tentative, and Kat mentally sighed. Kelly wasn't trying to be a creepy pain in the neck. Kelly was just trying to be a fan; she couldn't help that she sucked at it.

So Kat opened her mouth to say "Thanks, Kelly," but then the moment was ruined. By Kelly. And Kelly's creepy-perky big mouth.

"Not that you need it or anything," Kelly rushed on to reassure her, "because you are, like, the best one here? I mean it's like no competition _at all_? But seriously, you are going home with the gold! If you need _any_th_-_"

Two days of cloying fangirls and public scrutiny and soulless lizardmen, with nothing to show for it and people still in danger. All of Kat's frustration abruptly boiled over, and she said loudly, "Would you just_ shut up?_"

Kelly broke off in mid-babble, eyes going wide with shock.

"I'm trying to get ready," Kat said, gesturing at the bike and the track. Spelling it out for the terminally stupid. "I don't want roses, I don't want people fawning over me. Just back off and _leave me alone_."

Kelly stared at her for a long, speechless moment. Then something dark flashed behind those rainbows and lollipops before disappearing into a mask of grief. Tears actually welled up in her eyes, and she swallowed once before saying, wounded and bitter, "Hey, I get it, okay? _I get it._"

The other girl turned and ran off. Kat felt bad for about half a second, then shoved the vague queasy-guilty sensation aside so she could concentrate on the race.

_Last jump_, she told herself as she got her bike into place and revved the engine. _Watch out for the last jump._

As it turned out, she never got to the last jump, because as soon as the starter gun fired, the track exploded under her feet.


	9. Pains In The Neck

"Ow," Kat said, glaring up at the EMT. It wasn't the same sympathetic guy who'd patched up Berto; today's flavor was a stocky woman with her hair scraped back into a ruthless bun. She wasn't very sympathetic. Or gentle.

"Sorry," the woman said, not sounding sorry at all. She kept poking and prodding at Kat's ankle while the ambulance sirened its way through the streets of Miami. "Stop trying to move your head, ma'am."

"I don't have any spinal injuries," Kat said. She could think of a few people who deserved some, though. The guy who'd invented neckbraces and backboards, for one.

The woman gave her a patronizing smile. "Well, you were thrown twenty feet by an explosion –"

"Only _fifteen_ feet," Kat muttered, closing her eyes.

"- so we'll let X-Ray make the call on that, huh?" the EMT finished, not missing a beat.

Kat snorted, but didn't bother to fight the indignities of modern emergency medicine any more. Neither Josh nor Berto were there to witness it, and besides, she'd just been blown up. She wasn't feeling so great.

The ambulance finally got to the hospital and the EMTs unloaded her gurney and wheeled her inside. The ER was already buzzing – she hadn't been the only athlete injured – but the potential spinal injury bumped her up the triage rankings. It only took a half-hour or so to get x-rayed. By then the dull throb in her ankle had turned into a roaring pain, her neck had developed a serious kink, and she was ready to kill someone. Conveniently, Berto and Josh had arrived.

"Way to go, Turbo Boy," she said to Josh as soon as her friends came within range. "Good job spotting the bomb _right under your nose_."

Josh said to Berto, "I'm not dealing with this," and abruptly left her field of vision.

_That_ wasn't in the script. He was supposed to fire back, not disengage. Surprised, she looked at Berto, who sighed. "He's been guilt-tripping already. He didn't need any help."

"Oh," she said.

"And he's really worried about you," Berto added, this time reprovingly. "We're not even supposed to be back here, but he kept arguing until they let us."

"Oh," she said.

Berto sighed again. "It's okay. I'll go see if they've got the x-rays back."

He disappeared too. Kat resumed staring at the acoustic-tile paneling of the ER ceiling. Now she felt bad on multiple levels, and it sucked.

After a few minutes, Berto returned with a doctor and a sheaf of x-ray films. "No neck or back injuries," the doctor pronounced, cheerful. "Let's get you off of the backboard."

As soon as she was free, Kat sat up and stretched, rolling her shoulders and neck with a satisfying pop. "That's better."

The doctor smiled, busy but not too busy to be pleased. "And here's the bad news: you've got a hairline fracture just above your ankle, nothing too bad. I think a splint and a walking cast will do it. Someone will be around soon."

"Great," she said.

_"Soon"_ in hospital time meant _"within the next three hours"_; a fractured tibia was way down at the bottom of the triage list. Josh returned, Kat made a sideways apology, and then they ganged up on Berto and badgered him about getting his stitches checked. He refused.

"It's healing. See?" he said, pointing to the dark line along his cheek. "I don't even need a bandage today."

"It's not gonna leave a very good scar," Kat said.

"Thank goodness," Berto said.

"Nah, bro, you need a few scars," Josh said. "It adds character." 

"Hey! I have character," Berto said, offended, which for some reason cracked them up.

They heckled him about it some more until the police came around to interview all of them. One of the detectives informed them that the MegaPark was now closed – against Shine's wishes.

"Bummer," Kat said, not bummed at all.

"If Shine's sneaking around, this is gonna force his hand," Josh said after the cops left.

"Maybe I'll go check the police report," Berto said.

Kat raised an eyebrow. "You haven't already?"

He gave a rueful sigh and pointed a thumb at the sign on the wall banning cell phones and computers from the ER, apparently on pain of death. "I'll be outside."

With that, he wandered off in search of a legal nerd area.

"Oh, here," Josh said, pulling a folded piece of notebook paper from his back pocket. "I got ambushed in the parking lot by one of your fans."

"Not Kelly," Kat said, accepting the paper but holding it by the corner, between two fingers only.

He grinned. "Nope. Younger demographic."

Curious now, Kat unfolded the paper and read it.

_Dear Kat_, it said in a child's handwriting.

_I saw what happened. It was really scary! _

_I hope you are okay and don't have to get a cast._

_But if you get a cast it would be so cool if I could sign it. _

_I won't sign it too big, I promise._

_Your friend, _

_Meghan Preston_

_PS Thanks for the poster. You're really cool!_

"Now I feel bad that I'm not getting a cast," Kat said, folding up the paper and sliding it into her own pocket. _That_ was a keeper.

"If you were, you'd let me sign it too, right? And Berto?"

She eyed him. "Maybe. Would you sign it too big?"

"Of course not," he said, the picture of wounded innocence.

A physician's assistant appeared, saying brightly, "Someone needs a boot?"

Thirty minutes and a very tedious lecture about staying off her injured leg later, Berto had returned (to sign all the paperwork), and Kat was free to go.

In a wheelchair.

"This is so far beneath my dignity," Kat said. "Josh, just give me those crutches."

"Nope. Doctor's orders," Josh said cheerfully, holding the crutches out of range. She debated the pros and cons of continuing to argue, then decided: Screw it. She'd been blown up. She could get revenge later.

"Whatever," she said, slumping back in the wheelchair.

"You get to use them later," Berto said. "As soon as we get to the hotel."

"Great," Kat said. "Hey, by the way, when does _Josh_ get hurt on this trip?"

Josh was not amused. "Ha ha."

"Excuse me," the boot-bearing physician's assistant said, popping up with several informative-looking pamphlets in hand. "I have some literature you might want to take with you."

Josh accepted the pamphlets while Berto got behind the wheelchair and began pushing Kat to freedom, as embodied by the parking lot.

"And, um, if you don't mind," the PA said, holding out a piece of paper and a pen, "could I get your autograph?"

"Sure," Josh said, sounding very pleased to be asked indeed. "Do you want Kat's t-"

"NO," Kat said loudly. "No offense. Berto: push faster."

Berto obliged. As they cleared the front doors, he leaned over the back of the wheelchair and said, in a low voice, "Bomb squad confirmed it was plastic explosives, probably wired to a remote detonator. It matches the MO of the opening-day bombing."

"Yeah, I didn't think we had _two_ mad bombers running around."

She checked over her shoulder; Josh and the PA were trailing behind them, chatting about something. Josh was telling the guy a story that involved a lot of swoopy hand motions, and his audience was listening, rapt.

Berto added, "They were obviously on-site for both bombings. The timing's just too perfect."

"Nice work, Watson," she said – with a smirk, but she meant it. He was pretty good at this.

Berto seemed pleased by the praise. Then he said, "Uh-oh," and brought the wheelchair to a halt on the sidewalk.

Kat looked where he was looking and saw what he was uh-ohing. Unfortunately, the unwanted object had already arrived.

"Kat!" Richard Shine exclaimed, jogging up. He was melodramatically short of breath, although his hair and suit appeared to be in mint condition. "I just heard you were here. This is _horrific_." Of Berto, he demanded, "Is she okay?"

Like "she" was too wounded or stupid to answer that one herself.

Instead of saying, _Oh, so __**that's**__ why my creep radar was pinging_, Kat's injured pride dictated that she tell him, "Just banged my leg a little. I'll be fine."

"That's true – the cast is only a precaution," Berto said.

Of course, it didn't matter what they said, because as usual, Shine wasn't listening. With a surprising amount of venom, he said, "When I find out who did this – My God, you could have been killed today!"

She could've been killed a lot of times. Today's potential demise simply would have been more embarrassing than, say, getting taken down by a pack of raging Electrobots or drowned by Psycho and friends. "Yeah. I noticed."

Shine looked like he might be inclined to spout off a few more clichés, but chose instead to crouch down in front of Kat. He grasped the armrests of the wheelchair and said, urgently, sincerely, "Listen, whatever you need, it's yours. I'll handle the press, the police, everything. _You_ are my number one priority."

She was astonished to see that, against all odds and the laws of nature, Shine was actually upset.

Kat looked to Berto for help, but he was just kind of glaring suspiciously at Shine. Understandable… not very helpful, but understandable. She gritted her teeth and played nice. "Thanks, Mr. Shine."

"_Richard_. Please." He released the armrests and stood, resuming his usual super-slick aura. "Who's paying for the hospital bill? Nevermind, I'll handle it."

She glared at his back as he strolled away, muttering under her breath, "Yeah, sure, _Richard_. Or how about _Dick_?"

Josh, still talking to the physician's assistant several yards away, suddenly and unsuccessfully tried to muffle a snort of laughter. Eavesdropper.

Berto hadn't heard. He made a _hmph_ noise and said, every inch the indignant manager of a damaged professional athlete, "He's being nice because he doesn't want you to sue."

"Yeah," Kat said, thinking about that. Somehow that answer sounded too… normal. Shine was up to something. Something beyond the insurance fraud and skeezy attempts to become her manager.

But what?


	10. Home Alone

"Are you gonna be okay here?" Josh asked. "By yourself?"

Kat looked at him, unamused. "Do you want me to beat you over the head with this guitar?" she asked. "Because I can."

"Not on crutches," Berto said, reasonably enough. For a moment she thought he was going to take Josh's (overprotective) side – he _was_ their designated den mother – but instead he added, "I think you'll be safer than we will."

And therein lay the root of her current disgruntledness: Josh and Berto were discussing venturing out to sleuth, while she was stuck on the sofa with nothing to do but watch bad daytime TV and futz around with her guitar.

"She might not be safe until we're back in Del Oro," Josh said.

Kat caught on to his meaning before Berto did. "Oh, _come on_," she said, putting the guitar aside in disgust. "You can't really think that."

Josh crossed his arms over his chest and quoted from the secret-agent training manual. "No such things as coincidences."

"Not in a wilderness of mirrors," she retorted, seeing him his trite cliché and raising him professional jargon.

Berto finally got it. His eyes widened behind their glasses. "What're you saying? That both bombs were meant for Kat?"

Josh said, "She was at ground zero for two explosions. Don't you think that's weird?"

Considering that her old job had involved fighting guys with metal faces and laser guns for arms, she had to say that no, being blown up twice in three days wasn't terribly weird at all. "It's not me that's the target," she said, irritated. "The eco-terrorists are trying to shut down the park. I've just been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Twice," Josh pointed out, earning him a dirty look.

"Maybe Shine set off the bomb deliberately," Berto said.

Kat and Josh both looked at their friend. Kat asked, "We think _he's_ the bomber now?"

Berto shrugged. "There's no evidence to the contrary. And he does have the most motive."

"Yeah, and he's probably not too happy with you," Josh said to Kat, "not since you ditched in the middle of dinner last night."

"Remind me to burn that dress and send him the ashes," she said.

Josh looked confused. "The dress? I thought it was the shoes that you hated."

"I'm willing to generalize."

"The dress wasn't that bad," he said, and the sheer ridiculousness of that statement made her look at him. He coughed and got very interested in the floor.

Luckily, Berto – who had been deep in thought and thus oblivious to the last minute or so of the conversation – picked that very second to start talking again.

"I guess that settles it," Berto said. "I _have_ to get onto his computer. I should be able to bluff my way into the building, and then… uh… I'll think of something?"

"Mm. I've heard worse plans," Josh said.

"Yeah, from yourself," Kat said, because someone needed to.

Josh rolled his eyes. "I can't imagine why we wanna stop people from hurting you, Kat, but I'll head back to the motocross track. See if I can find anything to help us ID our bomber."

She chose to ignore most of what he'd just said, in favor of giving much-needed advice. "Snoop as Max. If somebody _is_ after me, seeing my own teammate lurking around might tip 'em off that we know something."

"Good point."

"I know," she said cheerfully. "Brains _and_ beauty."

He rolled his eyes again, but there was a smile hovering around his mouth now.

Not that she was staring at his mouth or anything.

She strummed the riff from "Bad Reputation" while Josh and Berto got squared away. If she had to be marooned during the middle of what was becoming an intensely personal investigation, at least her desert island had big soft cushions and kicking home-theater surround sound. And her chords echoed nicely off of all the swanky metal and glass.

"Okay, we're leaving," Berto announced. "Do you have your cell?"

It was digging into her hip at that precise moment. "Of course."

"And your tracking device?"

The tracking device was in her watch, which was on the nightstand – a thousand miles away by crutch standards. She could go get it the next time she had to use the bathroom. "Sure," she lied.

"Okay," Berto said. "Don't forget to eat."

"Or breathe," Josh said.

Kat flashed him a thumbs-up, or what would've been a thumbs-up if she'd remembered to use the correct finger. "Got it."

"We'll be back after lunch," Berto said. "Unless something happens."

She did a few bars of "I Love Rock N' Roll," despite the obvious handicap of not having an amp. "And in that case, I'll hero up and come save you guys."

"Remember not to put any weight on your ankle," Berto called while being forcibly pushed through the door by Josh, who was saying, "She _knows,_ bro, she's gonna be fine."

Kat kept her head bent over the guitar strings so the boys couldn't see her smile.

Josh finally got Berto into the hallway, then paused with his hand on the door. "Seriously. You gonna be okay?" he asked.

She made an exasperated huffing sound. "Go break a leg, McGrath."

He grinned and winked, then left. She heard the door click shut and lock, and that was the last of that.

"_Finally_," she said to the empty hotel room, trying to pretend it didn't sting a little (okay, a lot) to be left behind. She resettled on the luxuriously comfy sofa and fiddled with the tuning a little bit, then started to play. Stevie Nicks this time, a little slower, a little more bittersweet. She didn't sound as good as Stevie – or Joan, for that matter – but she didn't care.

She ran through "Silver Girl" without botching it too badly, gave up halfway into "Stand Back," and went through the prolonged drama of getting up to raid the fridge.

The crutches were the worst part. If she ever had to use the things for longer than a few days, she'd go crazy. They pinched, they slid, they were bulky and awkward. Altogether she would have much preferred being waited on hand and foot.

She managed to get over to the fridge and extract a ridiculously expensive soda, but then struggled to carry it back to the sofa without dropping it. Okay, without dropping it more than once. Or twice.

Finally, she was able to lean the crutches against the arm of the sofa and carefully lower herself down again. No sooner had her butt hit the cushions than there was a prim knock on the door, followed by, "Guest Relations."

Kat groaned. "Just leave it there!" she yelled.

"I have a package for Kat Ryan."

"Great! Leave it there!"

Instead of doing as told, the idiot knocked again.

She heaved a truly exasperated sigh and grabbed for her crutches again. "That's right, I was only blown up yesterday. Make me walk. Sure! I'll _limp_ to the door."

There was another knock. She balanced on the crutches and yanked the door open with a bloodthirsty, "_What?_"

Richard Shine's preternaturally white smile gleamed. "Kat," he said.

She glanced down the hallway and saw the elevator closing on the hotel employee Shine had obviously used to get her to the door. Also in the hallway was a very large, very burly man who was putting the stitching of his suit jacket at risk with every breath.

So Shine wasn't totally brain-damaged; he was traveling with a bodyguard now.

"Mr. Shine," she said, trying to feign enthusiasm and failing. Miserably. "Hey."

"It's Richard," he said. "I had business at the hotel today and, well, I still feel so awful about what happened to you. After all of the precautions I put in place, that someone would be so –" He paused, either searching for the word or just putting on a show.

"Insane?" she suggested.

"Inconsiderate," he said. "Of your future, of course."

"Uh-huh," she said, eyeing him warily. _Speaking of insane._

"I simply had to come by and check on you. In person."

"Well, I'm just peachy. So, okay, thanks for checking, and goodbye."

Shine smiled at her. "Yes, I'll let you get back to your rest. But first –"

He reached out with one hand. She was busy shutting the door and half-turning to collect her crutches, and her guard was down. To be honest, she was more wary of the bodyguard than of Shine.

And that cost her.

His hand grazed the juncture between her shoulder and neck. Before she could sock him in the gut – or other points south – there was a sharp, brief pain.

"Hey!" she said, staggering away, but it was too late. Even as she saw the syringe in Shine's hand, the drug was hitting her system.

Stupid. _There are no coincidences_. Rule One of spying. Rule Two: _Don't underestimate; don't assume_. And being blind was every bit as bad as being lost in a wilderness of mirrors. But maybe there was still a chance -

She tried to get out her cell phone, to hit Josh's speed-dial button, but fumbled it instead. The phone hit the floor with a little _thump_ while her vision grayed out and the room spun. Then she hit the floor, too, albeit with a bigger thump.

Shine leaned over her, mouth moving. It came as a relief that she was too busy blacking out to hear him.


	11. On The Table

Note: This chapter begins to delve into my own personal (and previously hinted at) head!canon. I think it should be pretty obvious where I wave good-bye to actual show canon. :)

---

Sedatives sucked.

Kat had never enjoyed the being drugged/waking up from being drugged thing. It was a bummer aspect of her chosen career that she had enough experience to recognize, immediately, the grinding headache unique to post-knockout.

The how, when and why of her drugging, she was a little blurry on… the last thing she remembered was telling Josh to break a leg. But memory gaps happened sometimes. Besides, she'd find out soon enough.

She pushed through the lingering grogginess and tried to pick up clues about her current situation before she opened her eyes.

Hot. Muggy. Fan whirring nearby, doing nothing more than pushing around stale air.

Well, she was still in Florida.

She figured out she was lying on a sofa – not a particularly large or nice one, either – and that there was no one else around. So she opened her eyes and blinked, trying to look more out of it than she actually was, just in case.

She was in a windowless room, maybe six by five. The sofa was the only piece of furniture; a recessed fluorescent in the ceiling was the only light. The fan was bolted to the ceiling, out of reach. Directly facing her was a steel security door and a one-way mirror, both of very recent installation, to judge from the sloppy patching on the plaster.

As far as secret villain lairs went, it was definitely down in the bottom ten.

Kat sat up and scanned the room for hidden cameras. She didn't see any. She also didn't see her crutches, although she still had on her boot. That could make things more difficult.

Okay. Time to figure out who'd abducted her from her hotel room and dumped her, sans crutches, in a newly-constructed secret room. This was clearly not a DREAD-grade operation. Heck, this was not even on par with the Mercury Brigade or those loony-bin Barkowskis.

Her two top suspects: Kelly and Shine. And somehow, she thought this setup was a little above Kelly's pay grade.

"Okay, I'm awake now," she said out loud. "And I've got a headache, so let's get on with this."

Almost immediately, the lock turned in the door, and it opened.

"Kat," Richard Shine said, smiling with all of his very white teeth. "A headache? I'm so sorry."

Kat was not surprised.

"Yeah," she said. "And it looks like my hotel accommodations have been downgraded."

"Mm, yes. Regrettable… and temporary, I think." Shine stepped clear of the door to allow someone else in – a man with a cheap suit and no neck to speak of. Hired muscle. Pretty dumb muscle, too, if Kat's instincts were right.

Tweedledum was carrying a folding card table and two folding metal chairs. Somehow, despite the bulging muscles and lack of space, he managed to set all the items up without knocking anyone over, then lumbered back out, closing and locking the door behind him.

Shine gestured at the chair nearest Kat. "Have a seat, please. I hoped we could have another discussion about my business proposal."

Kat stood and took a few limping steps to sit in the chair. She didn't want to follow Shine's orders, but figured it was better to play along for the moment. Besides, it gave her the opportunity to test out walking minus crutches. "You didn't have to go to all of this trouble, Mr. Shine. We could've talked at the hotel."

"I didn't want us to be interrupted," he said, flashing the teeth again. It was more shark than reptile this time. He turned and gestured at the one-way glass, and a second later Tweedledum cracked open the door just long enough to pass Shine a sheaf of papers. "And I didn't want you to… overexert yourself. I was being sincere, you know, when I said I was worried about your health. You were never meant- Well. Some of my employees aren't very good at following directions. But I'm sure I won't have that problem with you."

He smiled. She scoffed.

"My answer is still no."

"I thought it might be," Shine said. He held the papers up and waved them slightly, side to side. "So I came prepared with a few… alternate suggestions."

Kat had a few _alternate suggestions_ for him. The most G-rated one involved shoving his face through the glass mirror.

"Save it," she said, hoping beyond hope that she might be able to get out of this without actually touching the creep. "Look. I'm not interested in anything you have to say. I just want to get back to my friends, who _by the way_ are probably calling the cops right about now."

A smug, secret triumph lit his face. It upped his sleazeball factor immensely. "I think you're going to want to listen to this," Shine said.

"I seriously doubt it," she said.

"Oh, I don't," he said, laying the papers down so that she could see the mug shot clipped to the top of the stack. "I don't doubt it at all, Grace… Katherine… Reilly."


	12. Amateur Villain Night

Grace Katherine Reilly.

That was the name on the mug shot, on the rap sheet. That was the name of the punked-out teenage girl scowling at the police camera and the world. That was the name she had been born with and that she hadn't touched since joining N-Tek.

Grace Katherine Reilly was about to have a panic attack.

Kat Ryan was playing it cool.

"Nice hair," she said, looking at the photo with disinterest, and leaned back in her chair. "Your point?"

Shine was smiling. Not fooled. "I told you that I'd seen you somewhere before. I had some business in Philadelphia a few months ago. Lovely city, just lovely. You know, your father doesn't talk about you very often," he said. "But he still keeps a photo in his office."

"Uh-huh," Kat said.

"So, Grace Katherine Reilly, that brings us back to my business proposal. You can sign on the dotted line and become my client. Or…" He picked up the papers and flipped through it slowly. "Or you can dip into your trust fund and buy this back. I'm willing to accept a payment plan. Say, two million a year. For the rest of your life."

Blackmail. So _that's_ why he wanted her alive and well.

She remembered each and every charge on that rap sheet. It was a long one, and some of the entries (okay, all of them) would be very interesting to the national news media. And her current name and whereabouts would be very interesting to a few other people.

Grace Katherine Reilly went ahead and had her panic attack.

Kat Ryan said, "Oh please. I'm not giving you two cents. If we're done with this lame blackmail attempt -? I was in the middle of a seriously good nap."

Shine's lizard smile faded. For the first time he looked less than supremely confident. In fact, he started to turn a little red. He tossed the paper back across the table at her, defiant. "If that's the way you want to play it."

He turned and motioned at the one-way mirror. Almost immediately, the door lock clunked open and the hired goon brought in a chunky portable TV – an embarrassingly old one, as evidenced by its size and the eighties-classic purple-turquoise color combo.

Her stomach dropped. Had he already leaked everything to the press?

"Wow. You guys really spared no expense," she said, casually scornful. She folded the papers around the mug shot and stuck them in her back pocket.

Shine's red flush deepened to scarlet. Then he recovered his reptilian poise, smoothed the front of his suit, and turned on the TV. The audio was tinny, the picture was black-and-white, and the quality of both just somewhere south of "really sucky".

But it was more than adequate to show her the perils of messing with Richard Shine.

"- live from what we're hearing is a suspected terrorist bombing of the Vizcaynos Hotel. The fire is right now being contained to the top floors of the hotel, where it began, and I'm being told that the employees and guests were safely evacuated... uh… with some exceptions –"

Not Josh. Not Berto.

"-still unable to locate five to seven hotel guests and employees, Eric, some of whom are believed to have been on the upper floors when the explosion occurred. No names have been released at this time –"

Shine flicked off the sound. "My condolences on your _tragic_ loss, Ms. Ryan."

"What?" she said, looking around. "Oh, sorry. I'm supposed to cry or something, right? Break down into hysterical sobs at the thought that my beloved family is toast? Yeah, okay. I'll get right on that."

Shine went red again.

"No bodies, no tears. And anyway, you don't _open_ with the deaths. That's your best leverage – save it. Use it. You're supposed to make me beg for their lives." She crossed her arms and leaned back, maintaining cool, deliberate eye contact. "You really suck at this."

Finally, Shine broke. "Shut up!" he yelled, pounding a fist on the table and half-rising from his chair. "What do _you _know, you miserable little b-"

Strike. _Three._

Kat kicked up with her good leg and flipped the table over. Shine, who was off-balance and partially supporting his weight on the table, went down. The table went up – and smacked him in the face.

She jumped up from her chair and grabbed the embarrassing TV from the floor just as Tweedledum opened the door again. Kat shifted her balance onto her good leg and swung the heavy old portable TV at the goon's head.

He said, "Oof," and went down like a sack of bricks in the open doorway – except bricks were probably smarter.

She dropped the now-busted TV (no loss there) onto his chest and returned her attention to Shine. He was blinking, dazed, and gingerly touching a bleeding scalp wound. He was not ready for Kat to grab him by the lapel, haul him up, and slam him face-front into the wall.

"Blackmail's illegal," she said, twisting his arms behind his back in a hold that wouldn't really do any damage… unless she increased the torque. "So's kidnapping. And name-calling? Is just really rude."

Shine was panting and still fairly rattled. "How – did you -?"

"I don't know how you got that file," she said. "But I want it. _And_ all the copies you made, you slimy little weasel. I want to know where you're hiding them. And I'd kind of like that information _**now**_."

She couldn't quite make out his response, but it sounded more like name-calling and less like a helpful answer.

She increased the torque on his arms, ignoring the twinge of pain from her bad ankle. "Pop quiz, _Richard_," she said. "What charge got Grace Katherine Reilly her last nine to twelve months in Juvie?"

Shine opened his mouth, but couldn't get any words out. Involuntary tears were springing up in his eyes.

She leaned in closer to his ear and dropped her voice to a calm, controlled whisper, because "calm and controlled" was always scarier; she'd learned that from watching Jefferson Smith. "Here's a hint – it starts with 'assault' and ends with 'battery'. And I think, if she was here right now, she might be a little angrier with you than she was with that poor schmuck back in Philly."

She eased the pressure on his arms and he made an obvious attempt to not gasp in relief. "My office," he said. "Everything's in my office."

"Okay," she said, shoving him toward the door without letting go of his arms. This was the tricky part, but with any luck Shine would be too stunned to realize that if he made a move, he could probably overwhelm her in short order.

Sure enough, they climbed over Tweedledum with no problem and emerged into a construction zone that looked like it had been a guest bedroom in its former life. Tools and materials were still scattered around; the cell really _had_ been a rush job. Kat would not have been surprised to find a hardware store receipt in amongst the junk – except Shine had probably taken it all off of his own sites.

"This is a really low-rent operation," she said, force-marching him towards the bedroom door, which was standing open. "Guess the hotel was just a fluke. Which way's your office?"

"Left," he said. He was darting glances around, and his body language screamed _Hey, I'm about to make a break for it._

She bit back a sigh. Heaven help her survive Amateur Villain Night. She was so overqualified for this, it wasn't funny.

Kat stuck her booted foot between his expensive loafers, tripping him up. Shine crashed down, and she grabbed an orange extension cord from its resting place on top of a nearby drum of plaster. A couple of quick loops and a knot, and he was hogtied: hands bound behind his back, ankles tied together, and a length of cord connecting the two.

With a lot of effort, he could conceivably get to his feet and shuffle, but there was no way he could run… or fight her.

"That's better," she said. "Tell you what – I'll find your office, and you'll stay right there like the loser you are."

He glared heavily at her, but she was impervious to the glares of idiots. She gave her knotwork a last critical glance and walked out of the room, trying not to limp.


	13. Escape Plans

Out in the hallway, it became obvious that Shine's house was a generic two-story McMansion. There was an enormous, high-ceilinged foyer with an enormous, garish chandelier hanging over the kind of sweeping staircase Scarlett O'Hara would have enjoyed.

Kat was on the second floor, standing on tiles that were probably supposed to be convincingly fake marble. Unfortunately, she knew what real marble – and real wealth, old-money wealth – looked like. This wasn't it.

"A loser all the way around," she said under her breath, walking down the hallway and mentally crossing her fingers that Shine's office wasn't on the ground floor and he didn't have more minions stashed away, waiting to jump her.

For a change, her luck held. No further goons emerged, and the third door she pushed open proved to be the jackpot. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her, then took a moment to survey.

Pretentious desk. Pretentious chairs. Walls with built-in bookshelves, filled with pretentious books that Shine had probably never read. The fake marble floor continued here, with a very large Oriental rug that looked like it had come out of a Burmese sweatshop three or four years ago.

The only thing respectable and genuine about the room was the computer on the desk: it was top-of-the-line and brand new. Shine had managed to mess that up, too. The hard drive had been pulled out and smashed into an unrecoverable mass of metal bits.

There was a file cabinet in one corner, but the drawers were standing half-open and they had been ransacked, leaving only a few random papers sticking out haphazardly. A paper shredder and a soot-stained metal trashcan sat to one side of the cabinet; a box of matches sat on top.

"_Some_body's been destroying evidence," she said to no one. Well, that would make it easier for her.

On the desk, next to the computer, was a manila file folder with all sorts of official-looking stamps and tags. She recognized it as her juvenile record and felt a flash of indignant anger. That was supposed to be sealed. It was supposed to be _gone_. Back in the day, her dad had bribed a lot of people to make it disappear – but apparently Shine had bribed a lot of people to undo that magic.

She moved behind the desk, careful not to touch anything except the folder. That she picked up and flipped through slowly despite herself. What a walk down memory lane.

The life and crimes of Grace Katherine Reilly, age ten through seventeen.

_I don't miss her_, she thought. And she didn't. Grace had been a punk, and not a nice one. Josh would never have looked at Grace twice…

Wait a minute – _what_?

Unnerved, she closed the folder fast and limped over to the paper shredder and trashcan. She didn't have the time, but she carefully fed each page of her record – and the copy in her back pocket – through the shredder, then dumped the fluffy mass of paper strips into the trashcan. Before she reduced it to ash, she did a quick search for additional copies, then grabbed the smashed hard drive and dropped that into the trashcan too.

Then she struck a match and let it all go _fwoosh_.

While the trash fire burned down, she went around the office and wiped down surfaces for any prints. Fiber and hair evidence she couldn't get rid of, but since she'd been elsewhere in the house – and in Shine's company – the cops would likely write it off as due to transfer, not direct contact.

Finally, the fire was out. She examined the hard drive and decided it was too damaged to be revived, even with N-Tek technowizardry.

There might be more copies of her record floating around out there, but she couldn't do anything else tonight. She would just have to cross her fingers and hope neither Berto nor Josh ever came across them.

If they did…

She'd worked too hard to get things straight. She'd worked too hard to become someone worth knowing. So it wasn't going to happen. The end.

Thus fortified, Kat let herself out into the hallway, trying to fight through the sedative headache and figure out what the nagging feeling in her gut was telling her. The file was toast, the disk was trashed, her presence had been erased… what had she forgotten?

A flash of movement in her peripheral vision. She instinctively jerked away and thus barely avoided having her head taken off by a very angry Tweedledum.

Oh yeah: she had forgotten to tie up the muscle.

He took another swing at her, and this time she didn't dodge fast enough; he clipped her on the shoulder, her injured leg gave out on her, and she kissed the faux-marble McMansion floor.

"Lucky shot," she said, pushing herself back up – or trying to, anyway. Tweedledum might have had the brains of a tadpole, but he was strong, and now he was angry. The veins on his thick neck stood out and he had gone the same apoplexy-red color that Shine had been sporting earlier.

He growled and took a very menacing step towards her, massive hands flexing.

"Wait!" a voice said behind him. "Don't touch the girl."

Shine. Untied. And talking again.

Just great.

She got to her feet and took the best defensive stance she could manage with her leg aching and Tweedledum looming over her.

"I still have plans for you," Shine said around his henchman's broad back. He was cradling his arm against his chest. Was it broken? _Oh, please, let it be broken_.

"That's funny, 'cause I have plans for me too, and you're not in 'em," she said.

Shine glowered. "You're going to be sorry you caused me so much trouble."

"And you're going to be a walking cliché for the rest of your life," she retorted. "So?"

"I changed my mind," Shine said to Tweedledum. "Grab her and knock her out, then put her in the car. I'll take her with me."

"Sorry, wrong answer," Kat said. She stepped in closer to Tweedledum as the big man took another swing at her, ducked the blow, and delivered a strike to his chin with an upthrust of her hand. His head rocked back, and he swatted at her – but she followed up with a jab to his throat and hustled to one side, out of range.

"Guh," Tweedledum said, grabbing at his throat and going down to one knee.

Kat set her sights on Shine. He was stunned all over again, standing like a big dummy in the middle of the hallway. She took a few hopping steps, closed the distance, socked him in the gut, grabbed his wounded arm, and used that to flip him over her hip.

She sat on his back, making sure to dig her knee into his spine and wrench his arm up behind his back.

"You lose. But thanks for playing," she said brightly.

"Get off!" Shine raged. "How dare – ahh! My arm!"

Oh, it was definitely broken. She'd never met someone who deserved it more, and she was just about to tell him so when Tweedledum got to his feet – swaying, but angry – and prepared to charge.

Kat swiftly evaluated her chances and came up with a big zero. She couldn't let go of Shine, and she couldn't fight Tweedledum while holding onto his boss. She was between a rock and a hard place, and she was about to get crushed.

Tweedledum charged. Lacking options, Kat turned her head to try and catch the blow on something other than her chin.

And then Max was there, grabbing the hired thug and expertly turning his momentum into a picture-perfect judo throw. Tweedledum smacked into one of the hallway walls and thumped to the floor in a shower of plaster particles.

Kat released her hold on Shine and stood, hopping on her good leg to get clear. Max grabbed Shine by the scruff of his neck and hauled him upright.

Shine glared murder at Max, but the best he could do was to gasp, "You – what – what're you doing – here -"

"Me," Max agreed. "And what I'm doing is taking Kat home."

Well, _that_ was eye-rollingly macho. But a damn good entrance, she had to admit. Berto popped up at the end of the hallway, out of breath from running up those darn stairs. Kat foresaw more cardio in Berto's future.

"You okay?" he asked Kat, who nodded impatiently, more interested in the ongoing Max vs. Shine conversation.

"_You_, on the other hand, I'm leaving for the cops," Max was saying.

Shine spluttered and tried to bluff: "I haven't broken any laws!"

Max sighed, rolled his eyes, and looked at Kat, Shine still dangling casually from his hand. "Advice?"

"KO," she said. "_Please._"

"What?" Shine said, alarmed. "You can't –"

Max flicked one turbo-charged finger against Shine's temple and knocked him into unconsciousness. Shine went limp, and Max dropped him to the floor, where he began drooling. Snored a little, too.

Kat looked from Shine to her partner. She could write RELIEVED in five-foot neon lights and shoot off confetti guns while the Hallelujah Chorus played, and it would still not approximate what she was feeling.

Of course, she didn't say that.

She put her hands on her hips and looked bored. "So it wasn't much of a boss fight. But good job anyway."

Max gave her a cocky grin. "I do what I can."

"Looks like that was enough," Berto judged. He crouched briefly to check Tweedledum and Shine's vital signs, then stood up, evidently satisfied. "Now get out of Max mode before you flatline – that bomb stunt earlier used up way too much t-juice."

"Yes, Mom," Max said, and powered down to Josh.

Meanwhile, Kat hopped-limped over to Shine, carefully calculated angles and force, and kicked him in the ribs. To be nice, she aimed for the same side as his broken arm. "Jerk," she said, even though he was too unconscious to appreciate it.

"Uh… was that necessary?" Berto said, taken aback.

"Yeah. He got on my nerves," Kat said.

Berto didn't look convinced; Josh grinned and said, "That's my girl."

Kat froze. She knew she was supposed to make some wiseass snarky retort, but she couldn't get beyond Josh calling her _my girl_. Great. Next thing, she'd be giggling over pictures of hunky guys in magazines and fretting about what color lip gloss went with her purse.

She risked a glance at Josh and saw that he was equally stricken. Obviously, not a sentiment he'd wanted to share.

This was just getting better every second.

"We called the cops on our way here," Berto said, fearlessly stepping into the void of awkward silence. "I guess, uh, we should meet them outside. And maybe come up with a reason why the bad guys are, you know. Unconscious."

"Yeah. Good plan." Kat gave Shine a last scornful glance and then stood, heading for the front door. Josh and Berto fell in beside her, going more slowly than usual in order to keep pace with her. To distract everyone from the fact that she was not functioning at One Hundred Percent Awesome, she said, "So make with the exposition already. How'd you avoid being blown sky-high, figure out it was Shine, all that stuff?"

"That first part's easy. We cleared out of the hotel once we realized that you'd been taken," Josh said. "So we were halfway across Miami when Kelly bombed it."

Kat looked at him, surprised. She'd figured the bomber would be another anonymous thug for hire; Shine didn't seem like an equal-opportunity crime lord. "_Kelly?_ Creepy perky Kelly?"

Josh snorted. "Creepy perky Kelly is an eco-terrorist in her spare time. I – uh, _Max_ raided her apartment and found enough C-4 to turn all of Dade County into a smoking crater."

Given what she'd seen of Dade County thus far, Kat privately thought a smoking crater might be an improvement in some spots. "And here I thought her big skill set was being annoying."

Berto shook his head. "Nope. And Shine knew it. Her job application was red-flagged – she didn't even come close to passing the background check – but instead of reporting her to the police, Shine hushed it up and hired her."

"He _wanted_ her to blow up his park," Kat deduced. "Huh. I don't think that practice is approved of by the Better Business Bureau."

"He needs the insurance money," Berto said, sounding very cynical for someone who could quote most of _Stuart Little 2_. "He's deep in debt and getting deeper every day. _All_ of his businesses are operating in the red, even the hotel. Uh, former hotel. The MegaPark was supposed to be his big money-maker, but it's turned out to be the nail in his coffin."

Josh added, "He bribed half the people in Miami in order to buy the land and develop it. But he couldn't bribe the environmental activists."

They reached the stairs and Kat's ankle immediately began to protest the descent. "Yeah, I noticed."

"Kelly's just one person," Berto said.

Kat muttered, "One crazy person," under her breath, but listened as Berto kept talking. She'd asked for exposition, and boy, she was getting it.

"Some of the _normal_ activist organizations filed a ton of lawsuits right off the bat. They've been working their way through the courts since then, and the legal fees are going to ruin Shine whether or not he wins it."

Her ankle was _killing_ her. Why had Shine needed such a huge staircase? Was this him overcompensating or what?

She glared down at all the steps she had yet to conquer. Stupid melodramatic McMansion stairs.

"But it gets better," Josh said.

Berto nodded. "The activists did some investigating of their own, and what they found got all kinds of government agencies interested – the EPA, the FBI… and the IRS."

"Now _that's_ scary." Also, the perfect revenge. She almost felt sorry she'd kicked him and dislocated his elbow; the IRS was bad enough. "And we already know Shine's totally guilty of tax fraud." Suddenly the burned files in the office made sense. "Oh man. He was getting ready to skip the country. That's why he was trying to -" _To blackmail me_. She blinked and finished, "Uh, to become my manager."

Frowning, Josh demanded, "And that's all he wanted?"

"Yeah," she said, wary. "What's it to you, McGrath?"

He paused, then shook his head. "Nothing."

Of course not.

They reached the bottom of the Endless Stairs of Overcompensation. Across the grandiose foyer, the front door was standing open, and a few more hired grunts (ha! She _knew_ there were more of those guys) were sprawled out in varying degrees of beat-down on either side of it.

She felt a little flutter of warmth; Max really _had_ been worried about her. Then she told herself to quit being so excited about being a damsel in distress. It was undignified.

Her ankle picked that moment to give up the good fight, and she did some undignified windmilling as she tried to stay on her one remaining weight-bearing foot.

Before she wiped out, Josh grabbed her arm and waist, steadying her. Her usual reaction would've been to push him away and insist that she was all right, but, anti-damsel or not, she didn't feel like it.

Maybe it was fatigue; maybe it was sedative hangover; maybe it was the _that's my girl_ and the even earlier _you look really good_. At any rate, she leaned against him and let out her stress in a sigh.

It startled him. "Uh… Kat?"

_I was so scared you were toast, and I was so scared you were going to find out who I used to be – okay, nevermind, I'm still scared of that – and right now I just want a big, sissy, touchy-feely girly hug. And maybe a good long kiss._

That was what she wanted to say.

But what she actually said was, "My leg kinda hurts."

The hand on her waist moved tentatively across the small of her back. It made her shiver and burn all at once, and she wondered if it would be rushing things to tell him to quit fooling around and start… well, fooling around.

"Oh yeah?" he asked, trying to sound like his regular cool self. And failing. He had to clear his throat. "Does it hurt enough that I'll have to carry you out of here?"

Berto, shaking his head and clearly doing his best to remain oblivious, picked his way across the foyer and went outside without looking back, God bless him.

"Maybe," she said, leaning more of her weight against Josh, and not because her leg hurt.

"Kat," Josh said. His brown eyes had a lot of gold in them, and they were doing this shadowed, smoldering thing that was very interesting – almost as interesting as the way they kept looking at her mouth. "Hey. I, uh – I suck at this – but are you really okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "You really do. And yeah, I really am."

He looked skeptical, so she put her hand on the back of his neck, pulled him down, and gave him a good long kiss.


	14. The Kat Ryan Fan Club

Nothing improved a lousy vacation like a hot new romance.

Kat was feeling pretty good the next morning as they arrived at the sports park. Her leg hurt less, her ego was doing very well, thank you, and she was looking forward to losing the fight against temptation the next time she had Josh alone in a nice dark room with a locked door.

But before they could get to that, Team Steel had one final loose end to tie up.

Last night they hadn't told the cops anything after all. They'd made it outside, waffled on the issue, then decided just to get in the van and split, letting the Miami PD put the puzzle together.

It had less to do with preserving their secret identities and more to do with the fact that Berto was terrible at coming up with lies and his two teammates had been, uh, preoccupied. In Kat's defense, though, it turned out that Josh was a _really_ good kisser.

He was also an overprotective boyfriend, for all that their relationship was less than twelve hours old. "I can walk by myself," she snapped, jerking her away from him on their trip across the parking lot. It was a tricky maneuver on crutches, but she managed it.

"Yeah, but not well," he said. He was right, darn him. "So watch out, okay?"

" _'Watch out'_?" she demanded, instantly indignant. "Watch out for what? It's just a fracture. Unless we're up against a first-class bad guy, I can handle it. Even then I'd get in a few good hits, and you know it."

He leaned in and murmured, "Just play along, and you can boss me around later."

Whew. That was just hot enough that she had to give in. Not without a few more grumbles and a lot of dark scowls, of course – but she was a good girl for the rest of the walk up to the MegaPark's entrance.

Berto had been maintaining obliviousness through fierce determination and the help of an earpiece tuned to the police scanner. "They're almost here," he warned now. "We've got a couple of minutes, at most."

"This shouldn't take long," Kat said. She did the thump-swing-hop crutch routine towards a suspiciously perky blonde ponytail dressed in the MegaPark uniform. Kelly turned around as Kat and her two-man backup approached.

"Kat!" Kelly exclaimed, rushing over to them. "Omigosh! How are you feeling? I've been like _so worried_!"

Kat chuffed. "What is that, bomber's remorse?"

Kelly's eyes widened and she darted glances between Kat, Josh, and Berto. Suddenly she looked less like a lollipop unicorn and more like a cornered fox. A point in her favor, though – she dropped the BS. "I didn't have a choice? I mean, you see how awful this place is, right? It was all for the cause!"

Terrorists and their causes. If Kat had a nickel every time she'd heard some nutjob wailing about the cause, she'd be… okay, she'd be marginally more rich than she secretly was already.

So she gave Kelly's plea the respect it deserved: none. "What was? Trying to kill innocent civilians, or trying to kill me?"

"No!" Kelly blurted, stepping closer to Kat and grabbing her arm. "No, _no_, it wasn't - I-I wasn't trying to hurt you!"

Josh, demonstrating his new Overprotective Boyfriend mode, shoved Kelly back before Kat had the chance. "You've got a funny way of showing it," he told her. The scowl in his voice was (Kat had to admit) also kind of hot.

Right on cue: police sirens.

Kelly's attention was jolted to the entrance, where a SWAT van had just pulled up behind what looked like half of the Miami PD's squad cars.

"You didn't," Kelly gasped.

"We did," Kat said cheerfully. "And no, I won't autograph your prison jumpsuit."

She was betting on Kelly to make a run for it, despite the SWAT guys, so she was surprised when Kelly chose to use her last few moments of freedom in another fashion.

Kelly whirled on Kat. The rainbows disappeared under a sudden thunderstorm of dark nastiness – the sort of crazy evil that would plant bombs in a sports park.

"I won't be in there forever," Kelly snarled at her. "And when I get out, I'm going to make you _sorry_. You should've been my friend! That's all I wanted! _That's all I wanted!_"

The cops swooped down then, and there was a lot of shouting about _hands over your head_ and _get down get down_ and _step away_. Kat, Josh, and Berto played innocent bystanders and allowed the police to reassure them as Kelly was Mirandized and dragged, kicking and screaming, towards the squad cars. More cops streamed past them into the park, presumably in search of evidence for Richard Shine's deviant business practices.

Berto looked on the bright side. "Well, at least Kelly and _Richard_ will have lots to talk about while the police are taking their fingerprints."

Josh said, "Maybe they'll form the first prison chapter of the Kat Ryan Fan Club."

"I have a fan club?" Kat asked, choosing not to hear the anguished wail of _"Kat! Please! We can still be friiiieeennnds!"_ from the direction of the parking lot.

"Sure." Josh ticked off the members on his fingers. "Me, Berto, and that kid with the freckles."

Berto said, "And all of our good friends here at the Magic City Extreme Sports MegaPark."

Kelly's wail finally cut off as the cops slammed the patrol car door shut.

"Oh yeah," Josh said, nodding at Berto. "Can't forget them."

It was Kat's job to act annoyed, but she was feeling too good. She wrinkled her nose and waved it off. "If that's fame, I'll pass."

"C'mon, Kat," Josh said, teasing and obviously angling for some kind of head injury. "Being a star has lots of perks."

She pretended to consider it. "Nah… I think I'll stop being so good and start becoming a has-been, just like you."

"Ouch," Berto said.

Josh grinned, slung an arm around her shoulders, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Hey - that's no way to talk to the president of your fan club."

"Yeah, whatever," she said, rolling her eyes, but she was smiling like an idiot.


End file.
